27 Jan 2012
On January 11th the Israeli parliament passed an amendment to the so- called “Infiltrators Law”. This revision allows the authorities to automatically imprison asylum seekers for three years. The plan includes constructing a 10,000 person jail to house the refugees. According to Amnesty International, this puts Israel at the top of the Western World for length of imprisonment of refugees. Today Israel is home to nearly 50,000 asylum seekers from Africa, 85% of whom are from Eritrea and Sudan.
The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Nic Schlagman and Johannes Bayu of the African Refugee Development Center, Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights, and "Ibrahim", an Eritrean asylum seeker in Israel for ten years.
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