http://www.timesofisrael.com/state-to-appeal-ruling-on-eritreans-right-to-asylum/
State to appeal ruling on Eritreans’ right to asylum
Interior Ministry slams ‘grave and untrue’ court decision that Israel may be contravening UN Refugee Convention
BY SUE SURKES September 6, 2016, 9:11 am
The Interior Ministry will appeal a tribunal ruling that brought temporary hope for thousands of Eritrean nationals seeking asylum in Israel.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri on Monday dismissed as “unfortunate” and a potential harbinger of “endless trouble” a Sunday ruling by Judge Elad Azar that the government’s policy of denying refugee status to Eritrean army deserters could contravene the United Nations’ Refugee Convention.
The court had also rejected an Interior Ministry claim that overturning its policy could force it to grant asylum to a large number of Eritreans and that this could have serious consequences for Israel.
Vowing not to let the matter go “until reason wins and is accepted in the courts as well, ” Deri called the ruling “a distortion of the state’s position, and the statement that Israel is not meeting its obligations to the Refugee Convention is serious and untrue,” Haaretz reported.
“The facts on the ground are different and every application is examined individually, according to all the criteria, and in suitable cases the status of refugee is granted.”
Deri said previous attorney general Yehuda Weinstein had approved his ministry’s stance on desertion not being a qualification for asylum. He added that dismissing that opinion would have “significant implications across the board that could bring tens of thousands of infiltrators back here.”
European countries granting asylum to refugees were “having to deal with the consequences and to check every application thoroughly,” Deri added.
The court ruled Sunday that “in general, desertion in and of itself doesn’t constitute grounds for granting political asylum.
“But desertion that is seen as expressing a political view, and for which the punishment exceeds reasonable bounds, could amount to persecution in the sense in which Israel interprets the Refugee Convention.”
The judge went on: “Limiting the protection given under the Refugee Convention by not applying it to people entitled to refugee status, just because there are many of them, doesn’t comply with the Refugee Convention or the rules of Israeli administrative law…We are talking about the personal, individual rationales of many people, not about a general group rationale.”
He added: “Even in the completely theoretical case in which it would be found that refugee status had to be granted to all those asylum seekers, I believe this isn’t a quantity Israel is incapable of absorbing or that would lead to unreasonable results, given that in any case, all of them are expected to remain in Israel for a long time even if their applications are rejected.”
Eritrean nationals submitted 7,218 requests for asylum to Israeli authorities between 2009 and the beginning of July 2016, of which only eight were approved, with 3,105 still waiting for a response, and the rest either rejected or withdrawn, Haaretz reported Monday, using Interior Ministry figures it obtained.
The appeal for which judgment was delivered was filed two years ago by Tel Aviv University’s Refugee Rights Clinic and the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants on behalf of an Eritrean asylum seeker who had deserted from the Eritrean army and broken the law by leaving the country.
The Interior Ministry’s Refugee Affairs Advisory Committee had rejected his application without discussion. The court on Sunday ordered it to reconsider.
“We can’t accept the clear trend in the cases that have been brought to this tribunal to date, in which asylum requests by Eritrean nationals that are based on claims of having evaded or deserted from military/national service are rejected at hasty meetings, without any reason, and without even being discussed by the full advisory committee on refugee affairs and brought to the interior minister for a decision,” Azar, the judge, wrote.
In June, hundreds of Eritrean asylum-seekers took to the streets near Tel Aviv in support of a UN report issued earlier that month into the African state’s regime, considered one of the world’s most repressive.
A report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea said crimes against humanity have been committed in a widespread and systematic manner in Eritrean detention facilities, military training camps and other locations across the country over the past 25 years.
Crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, torture, persecution, rape, murder and other inhumane acts have been committed as part of a campaign to instill fear in, deter opposition from and ultimately control the Eritrean civilian population since 1991 when Eritrean separatists defeated Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, the report says.
According to the United Nations, around 5,000 Eritreans risk their lives each month to flee the nation where forcible army conscription can last decades.
AFP contributed to this report.
Received on Tue Sep 06 2016 - 09:59:55 EDT