Israel Grants First Refugee Status to Sudanese Asylum Seeker

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Israel Grants First Refugee Status to Sudanese Asylum Seeker

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM — Jun 23, 2016, 4:26 PM ET

Israel has granted refugee status to a Sudanese asylum seeker from Darfur for the first time.

Population and Immigration Authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad says Darfur-born Mutasim Ali is the first national of Sudan — an enemy state of Israel — to gain temporary residency according to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention.

Ali says regime forces burned down his family's village in Darfur. He fled Sudan after he was arrested and tortured for activism, and crossed Egypt before slipping across the Israeli border in 2009.

Ali applied for refugee status in 2012 and endured 14 months in a desert detention facility in Israel before winning release in the Supreme Court.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israel-grants-refugee-status-sudanese-asylum-seeker-40084711

[Little Tich]

1. This would be great news if he was the only Sudanese refugee in Israel.

Unfortunately, there are over 4000 of them, so this is at best a miniscule step towards recognizing their human rights.

Sudanese in Israel
Source: Wikipedia

Sudanese refugees in Israel (Arabic: اللاجئون السودانيون في إسرائي‎‎ ) refers to citizens of Sudan who have sought refuge in Israel due to military conflict at home, and to those who moved there illegally as migrant workers. In 2008, there were 4,000 Sudanese in Israel, 1,200 from Darfur and the remainder Christians from South Sudan. The majority infiltrated through the Israeli-Egypt border. Most live in Tel-Aviv, Arad, Eilat and Bnei Brak.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_in_Israel