African migrants on Tuesday vowed to remain on strike indefinitely until their demands are met by the Israeli government, on the third day of a nationwide strike called to protest Israeli government policy towards asylum seekers.
The decision to continue the strike was announced at a press conference held near the Central Bus Station in the mid-afternoon. Hours earlier, thousands of African migrants gathered in Lewinsky park, where a series of speakers took to the stage to brainstorm how to take the protest forward and keep up the momentum of the past few days.
During Tuesday's rally, one protester, an asylum seeker from Darfur named Jacky, also held up a picture of an Eritrean infant that was stabbed on Friday night by an Israeli man, and said “she is all of ours [sic] child, she is the child of all of Africa”, adding that “we do not want to kill any Israeli, but we will protect ourselves and we will die for this.”
At the rally, protesters also announced that they planned to march to Jerusalem, and if not given permits, they would camp out in Lewinsky indefinitely. By Tuesday night it was announced that they had not received a permit from police.
Contacted by phone, Jacky said that they had reached the decision to send a group of a few hundred asylum seekers to Jerusalem by bus on Wednesday morning, where they would hand a letter with their demands to Israeli politicians outside of the Knesset. Their demands include an end to the jailing of illegal migrants and for the Israel to comprehensively check asylum seeker requests for the community.
The morning's rally came the day after several thousands migrants protested outside of foreign embassies and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees headquarters in Tel Aviv, demanding their intervention, and two days after a mass rally brought over 15,000 migrants to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.
Eritrean Emmanuel Yamane told a crowd of reporters gathered at the press conference that the situation for migrants in Israel has become significantly more dire as of late, as the government has stopped renewing visas and has stepped up the arrests of asylum seekers in Israeli cities.
“The government is pushing us and making us crazy and not looking at us like human beings. They believe if it gets harder and harder for us we will go back willingly. The government of Israel wants the people to be afraid of us and not see us as human beings, but we tell you don't fear us,” Yamane said.
He added “we are sick of the incitement against us by the government, the ministers – we feel it in the streets, the bus, the neighborhoods” Asylum seeker Haidar Hassan Didan told the press that “we are asking that the state of Israel treat us humanely and will present our requests to the UN , Israel isn't alone in this matter, there are many places in the world and many other refugees in the world.”
Mutasim Ali, an asylum seeker from Darfur, said that the protest movement was inspired by the detainees who marched from the Holot open detention facility to Jerusalem last month and that Israelis “need to understand that we have nothing left to lose, Israel's choice gives us the answer that there is no other choice. They give us a terrible choice, or go to prison or go home.”
The words of protest came following statements by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar and others that the protests and strikes would not sway the government from carrying out its immigration policies.
As the asylum seekers protests continued in Tel Aviv, the Israel Prison Service confirmed that 130 detainees at Saharonim had been on hunger strike for the past two days. As of Monday night the IPS said only that the detainees were sending back their meals, adding that according to protocol it is only a hunger strike after someone sends back six meals.