#darfuri

[rightsinexile]

Hotline for Refugees and Migrants secures refugee status for Darfuri in Israel

Dear Friends,

It has been a hard few months. On November 14th two Israelis beat a Sudanese asylum seeker to death in Petah Tikva. A week later, another Sudanese asylum seeker met his death. He had been in Israel six years when he gave in to the government's bullying and agreed to 'voluntarily return'. Upon arrival at the airport in Khartoum he was taken into interrogation. He did not make it out alive.

Especially in the face of difficult incidents that we cannot control, it is important to reflect on the things we can control and that we have achieved. This year we released 87 refugees and migrants from detention, including one man who had been detained for an unbelievable ten years. In addition we prevented 26 people from being sent to detention in Holot, many of them survivors of the Sinai torture camps. But the highlight of the year was securing refugee status for Mutasim Ali, the first asylum seeker from Darfur that the state of Israel has recognised.

Watch the video of Mutasim’s lawyer Asaf Weitzen, Head of the Legal Department at the Hotline, discussing the struggle to gain refugee status for Mutasim.

We fought for Mutasim for over two years. In June 2015 the Ministry of Interior replied to our continual badgering to say that they were making ‘an effort to come to a settled position for the Interior Ministry with regard to the Sudanese population from the Darfur region’. More than ten years after the United Nations Human Rights Committee presented a detailed inquiry of crimes against humanity taking place in Darfur, the state of Israel had not come to a ‘settled position’.

Mutasim finally got an answer in June 2016. The state recognised him as a refugee. This status means recognition, legitimacy and justice. For Mutasim, for others like him, and for everyone who has followed this struggle since the first Darfuris arrived in Israel back in 2006, it is also a sign that when we band together and commit to making change, we can make a difference and influence this state to be the humane, democratic country that we want it to be.

Happy Channuka, Christmas and holiday season to all of our supporters.

Reut Michaeli,

Executive Director

Hotline for Refugees and Migrants

[rightsinexile]

UK Upper Tribunal clarifies protection claims for non-Arab Darfuris in Sudan

Submitted for inclusion by Kuldip Phull. This is an extract of a case originallypublished on Tribunal Decisions on 8 January 2015.

 The case relates to a Sudanese non-national non-Arab Darfuri who had been refused asylum notwithstanding the Asylum and Immigration Tribunals decision in AA (Non-Arab Darfuris-relocation) which concluded that ‘that if a claimant from Sudan is a non-Arab Darfuri he must succeed in an international protection claim’.

In response to the First Tier Tribunal’s decision that the applicant was not covered by AA, the Upper Tribunal confirmed that reference in AA to ‘Darfuris’’ ‘is to be understood as an ethnic term relating to origins, not as a geographical term. Accordingly, it covers even Darfuris who were not born in Darfur’ [14]. Thus, even though the applicant was not born in Sudan, if returned he would be perceived to be a non-Arab Darfuri. Given that the applicant’s submissions relate to the fear of persecution on grounds of race within the 1951 Refugee Convention and that the attitude of the Sudanese authorities to non-Arab Darfuris has worsened, the Upper Tribunal set aside the First Tier judgment for legal error and allowed the appeal of the applicant.