Go Home or Go To Jail: Israel Pressures African Migrants to Leave

By RT
Israel is offering illegal immigrants $3,500 and a one-way ticket home as it begins to crack down on refugees, who face prison if they don’t take up the deal. Rights groups are appalled at the move, saying Israel should be doing more to protect them.

Israel says the tough move is necessary to send a message to migrants that making the journey is not worthwhile in the first place. As deterrents it has built a steel fence along the border with Egypt, houses migrants in a detention camp in the middle of a desert, and has stopped issuing work permits to deter would-be migrants

Israel was founded by refugees and continues to welcome Jews from around the world who wish to relocate there. During the 1990s over a million Jews from the former Soviet Union crossed the welcome mat.

Jews from Ethiopia have also looked to settle in Israel, however, they have not had an easy time of things in trying to start a new life.

[...]

Approximately 135,500 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, and more than a third of them – over 50,000 – were born there.

However, it would seem they are fortunate in comparison to their African neighbors who are not of the Jewish faith. Over the last six years, Israel has a dismal rate of accepting refugees from Eritrea. Despite the fact 300,000 asylum seekers from the country in the horn of Africa have been offered refugee status around the world, Israel has accepted only four people.

Aside from making it hard for potential refugees to get to Israel, the country is also giving those already there incentives to leave.

A government program has offered those without legal papers the chance to return home with $3,500 in cash, the option of going to a third country, or spend an indefinite time in an Israeli prison.

Over the past two years, over 9,000 Africans have taken up Israel’s offer and left. Before the crackdown began African workers could regularly be found around Tel Aviv doing menial jobs, such as washing dishes and cleaning hotel rooms which Israeli’s would not touch.

“It is a form of coercion, but it is not forced deportation,” said Sigal Rozen, who works as the public policy director for an Israeli human rights group called Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. However, Rozen was adamant, “Israel should do more,” the Washington Post reported.

Read More

Zionism and Liberalism: Complementary or Contradictory?

The longish episode of left-wing, racist and militarist étatisme, has been replaced by a no less militaristic, neo-liberal racist state, which while professing liberal values, is continuing the illegal occupation and war crimes in Gaza.

Members of Neturei Karta Orthodox Jewish group protest against Israel. (Wikipedia)

By Haim Bresheeth
Like many other ‘national’ movements of the late nineteenth century, political Zionism was originally presented as part of the European liberal tradition, which reaches an important pitch in 1848. Mainly developed into a vibrant political movement by the author and journalist Theodor Herzl, a somewhat typical product of the Viennese Jewish bourgeoisie of the fin de siecle, Herzl was also a typical liberal of his period. It is of course the period which sees general suffrage in some countries (though not that of women), a large number of new nation-states being established in Europe, and also the promising height of modernism, a crucial trend in the arts, theatre, literature, architecture, and also early cinema – the art-form of modernity.

This growing democratisation of the European polis is the fruit of the liberal development of a couple of centuries, at least. The apparent lessening of traditional anti-Semitism and the gradual endowing of Jews with human rights has also been paralleled by the growth of new forms of anti-Semitism, supposedly ‘scientific’ and using such approaches as phrenology to develop new Judophobia for the modern age; such were the attempts of the Action Francaise in France, for example, or the politics of the anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, who became mayor of Vienna just as Herzl was about to publish his Judenstaat, his seminal Zionist text, in 1896.

Typically, liberals in Europe, like Gladstone, supported some freeing of colonial societies, like in the case of the debate about Irish Home Rule during the 1880s, but never opposed new colonial ventures by Britain, such as the occupation of Egypt in 1882. The focus of such liberals was on free-trade, laissez-faire economics, minimal government intervention and individual freedoms. Of course, the individual was European by definition, and most of humanity living elsewhere and in many cases under the control of European powers, were widely considered as ‘natives’ and inferiors - hence not eligible for the same rights as the ‘civilised nations’.

This portfolio of policies suited Herzl perfectly. His Zionism was presented as a project of freeing the Jews of Europe from centuries on racism by removing them to their ancestral home, whereby they will build a liberal European society in the midst of ‘Asiatic despotism’ and will serve as the modern, European imperialist wedge in the backwards Middle East.

As part of taking over Palestine, Herzl describes (in his Complete Diaries (1960) p. 88) the process of emptying the country of its ‘paupers’, meaning most of the indigenous population, in order to create a Jewish state. This blueprint of early Zionism has been the mainstay of political Zionism ever since, and implemented in 1948, when the newly created IDF has ethnically-cleansed four fifths of Palestine of around 750,000 Palestinian inhabitants. In this whole period only the brief episode of Brit Shalom, a left-leaning group of German liberals based in Jerusalem, and advocating a bi-national state and open relationship with the Arabs of Palestine, has offered anything but subjugation to the local population. Alas, they never accounted for more than a hundred people, and had no effect whatsoever on Zionist policies.

On the face of it, Herzl’s political attitude has affected Zionism even after his death. However, this is somewhat inaccurate when one considers the history of Zionism in detail. It was indeed in 1905, a short time after Herzl’s death, that the future route of Zionism was changed dramatically by the arrival of few hundred Jewish socialists from Russia, after the failure of the 1905 revolution. This group, which was to be greatly strengthened over the next two decades, would become the dominant force of Palestine Zionism, pushing the Herzlian liberal Zionism into a historical corner which it only escaped after 1977, when the first Begin government took power.

The interregnum of seven decades would give birth to some innovative social formations, such as the Kibbutz, which were crucial for the capturing of Palestinian land and expanding the land-base of Zionism, as well as to its military expansion. In this long and troubled period, Zionism has abandoned its liberal roots, preferring instead a left-wing rhetoric of the industrial and agricultural working class, but clearly excluding any opportunity of rapprochement with the indigenous population, and acting as the core of a herrenvolk democracy - a democracy for Jews only.

On achieving statehood in 1948, Israel embarked on an anti-liberal agenda – an omnipresent, militaristic state, instigating mass ethnic cleansing, and placing the Palestinians left within its enlarged area under severe military government which lasted until 1964, when the statist (a practitioner of the French politics of étatisme) Ben Gurion left the political scene. During this period, the Histadruth, the federation of trade unions, owned and controlled up to two thirds of all production, export and import, and was the largest employer in the country. The liberal Zionist project seemed at an end, and some naïve European socialists mistook this militaristic colonial state for a socialist polity, unaware of the background described. The Kibbutz gap-year became de rigueur for young European lefties.

The political upheaval of 1977, when the castigated Israeli liberal right has captured power from the collectivist left, has seemingly changed Zionism forever. Even when governments of the ‘left’ were in power since 1977, the (neo)liberal social politics of laissez faire, mass privatisation of socialised resources and services and support of deep inequalities has not been rescinded. Post 1977, the massive social structures of left Zionism were quickly and efficiently taken apart, the union movement decimated, and the Kibbutzim, which helped to steal so much of Palestine’s land, became some of the richest landowners in Israel - employers of gastarbeiters from across the globe, on punitive and inhuman terms.

Israeli capitalism, under this new social regime, became the strongest in the Middle East, controlling massive empires of media, building, armaments and new tech industries. The Israeli neoliberal economy is one of the strongest in the world, based on the captive market of six million Palestinians, two thirds being stateless and lacking any human or employment rights, and the insatiable global thirst for arms and new technologies. The longish episode of left-wing, racist and militarist étatisme has been replaced by a no less militaristic, neo-liberal racist state, which while professing liberal values is continuing the illegal occupation, barbaric war crimes in Gaza and elsewhere and the denial of rights to millions, as well as squeezing its own citizens, while serving the narrow financial elite ruling the country.

All of which never stopped Israeli propaganda using liberal intellectuals as the mainstay of its work abroad, of course. Audiences in many countries are aware of the trio of authors – David Grossman, A B Yehosua and Amos Oz, who are the permanent whitewashers of Israeli policies, travelling around the globe, financed by various Israeli Ministries, as evidence of the open-minded Israeli society, and allowed their mild critical edge as proof. Israel has realised a long time ago that it is better defended by mild critics, than by fervent ideologues.

The attack on Gaza in summer 2014 is a case in point. Throughout the murderous onslaught on a large civilian conurbation, Israeli propaganda used the mantras “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “thousands of rockets are raining over Israel”. These were uttered not only by the IDF spokespersons, but also by the seasoned liberals whose voice carries more weight abroad. Listening to them, one could imagine that Israel was under the Blitz, and had no choice but to react and defend itself.

The realities were different, of course – the ‘thousands of rockets’ harmed some six people in Israel, (66 soldiers were killed in fighting with resistance fighters inside Gaza) while the bombing of Gaza, in 51 days, amounted to twice the weight of high explosives dumped on London during the Blitz, and killing over 1200 people, injuring over 13,000, and making 110,000 people homeless. In the best liberal traditions of disregarding the humanity of indigenous populations, the trio of liberal musketeers and their allies in academia and the arts, found it acceptable to defend the war crimes of their government. It must be a unique object lesson in how far the term liberal may be stretched.

____________________
This article is part of the Gender and Race strand of the Liberalism in neoliberal times series that OurKingdom is running in partnership with Goldsmiths, supported by the Department of Sociology. You can read Gholam Khiabany's introduction to the whole series here.

Liberalism in neo-liberal times - an OurKingdom partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy

Deportations from California Drop 44% Since January After New State Law Went Into Affect

 Minneapolis protest against Arizona immigrant law SB 1070
Photo by Fibonacci Blue.

California accounted for a third of all deportations in the United States in the past.

By ELLIOT SPAGAT and AMY TAXIN
Far fewer immigrants arrested by California law enforcement are being turned over to federal authorities for deportation since a new state law went into effect in January.

The law was pushed by immigrant advocates and directs law enforcement agencies to more quickly release those without serious criminal records rather than hold them so federal officials can take them into custody for deportation proceedings.

Already, according to a review by The Associated Press, the new law appears to be having a big impact in slowing deportations at a time when President Barack Obama is looking to ease immigration enforcement policies nationwide and appease immigrant advocates who say his administration has been too tough.

Until now, California has accounted for a third of deportations under U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's Secure Communities program, which screens the fingerprints of arrestees for potential immigration violations.

Read More

Fail and Prosper: How Privatisation Really Works — Getting Filthy Rich Taking Over Government Services, then Selling Third Rate Services Back to Government

Ruby McGregor-Smith, chief executive, Mitie (Ed Robinson/OneRedEye)

By Clare Sambrook
Want to make £10 million and more? Become an accountant. Learn how to make austerity pay.

Ruby earns more than maybe anybody you have ever met. She is not an Oscar-winning movie star. She hasn't won Wimbledon. Ruby McGregor-Smith is an accountant who runs a British company called Mitie (pronounced Mighty).

She pays herself £1.4 million a year. Her Mitie shares, worth £2 million, bring another £60K in annual dividends. On the side, as a part-time director, she picks up £60K more.

Last September she 'bought' more shares. They cost her absolutely nothing. She sold them straightaway, making £730,000 in a moment. And now, thanks to British taxpayers, Ruby is about to get richer.

On the eve of her 51st birthday last month, the Home Office gave her a gigantic contract: eight years' work, worth £180 million, running two immigration lock-ups in West London.

Mitie got the job — holding 1000 men at Colnbrook and Harmondsworth Removal Centres — only three years after entering what Ruby calls the "market".

What's Mitie's experience? They run buildings for Lloyds Bank, clean Odeon cinemas, print and distribute documents, and maintain school buildings under Private Finance Initiative contracts.

For almost three years they have run Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, near Oxford. It isn't going well.

Campsfield Oct2013 (CampaigntoCloseCampsfield)

Last October one suicidal inmate set fire to his cell. The blaze spread quickly — there was no sprinkler system. Ten fire engines rushed to the scene; 180 people had to be evacuated.

Seven years ago, after a similar fire in the same Campsfield block, Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Services strongly recommended sprinklers. It didn't happen.

Mitie are experts in fire prevention. They tell potential clients: "our fire and security team can integrate fire prevention, detection, and suppression with your security equipment, including fire detectors, fire alarms, extinguishers, sprinkler systems . . ."

Why didn't Mitie heed the Fire Service's warning and install sprinklers when they got the Campsfield contract? Phil Miller, a Corporate Watch researcher, asked Mitie. They wouldn't say.

How does this 'market' work? Less than three years' experience of guarding immigration detainees. One massive fire. And then a gigantic government contract to run two more detention centres. Why didn't the work go to a company more experienced than Mitie?

The competition

The UK's most experienced immigration detention companies are G4S (the London Olympics security bunglers) and Serco (where Ruby spent nine years; it's a small world).

G4S guards killed asylum seeker Jimmy Mubenga (on a British Airways plane at Heathrow Airport) while trying to deport him. Serco guards have subjected vulnerable women to sexual abuse at Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire. These things didn't stop G4S and Serco winning more government contracts.

Home Office ministers and their civil servants have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect their 'commercial partners'. They buried medical evidence that children were being harmed at Yarl's Wood, and rebuked doctors and lawyers who published evidence of assault. Border Agency chief executive Lin Homer four years ago complained that doctors who expressed concerns about dangerous restraint techniques were "trying to damage the reputation of our contractors".

But then last year G4S and Serco were caught doing dodgy accounting. They'd charged the Ministry of Justice for tagging ex-offenders who hadn't been tagged, they'd even charged for tagging dead people. Now all their government contracts are under scrutiny and the Serious Fraud Office is going through their books.

G4S's failures don't stop in the UK. In South Africa last year the government had to take command at G4S-run Mangaung Prison after the company lost control. The Australian government is trying to find out how one detainee died from multiple head injuries and many more were badly injured at G4S-run Manus Island detention centre.

Who else could the British government have chosen to run Harmondsworth and Colnbrook?

There's the American prisons company GEO Group — a spin-off from the sinister old Wackenhut Corporation. They've run Harmondsworth since 2009. Why weren't they given the new contract?

When the Chief Inspector of Prisons paid a surprise visit to Harmondsworth last Summer, he found that one wheelchair-bound low-risk detainee who'd suffered a stroke had been handcuffed on a hospital visit. Another man was handcuffed while sedated and undergoing surgery.

For five hours in hospital GEO guards kept a frail 84 year old Canadian handcuffed. Then he died. Unhelpful headlines followed, there were questions in Parliament, just as GEO's contract came up for review.

Why didn't the Home Office choose an experienced contractor with a proven record of providing secure and safe accommodation and good value to the taxpayer? Because no such private contractor exists.

The losers

Privatisation hurtles on in the UK, regardless of the damage. Even David Cameron and George Osborne acknowledge that we have been badly served by the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), under which companies build hospitals, schools and prisons, then lease them back to the state, locking taxpayers into decades long maintenance contracts.

In Yorkshire, to take one modest example, the cost of rebuilding Calderdale Royal Hospital is £65 million. The public will end up paying £773 million. For providing one extra grit bin (value £200) outsourcer Amey charges Birmingham Council £4,500, the BBC reported the other day.

PFI will ultimately cost the taxpayer £300 billion, a Guardian investigation has revealed. "The irony is that we privatised the buildings but nationalised the debts. It's crazy," said Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee that is supposed to guard taxpayers' interests.

The outsourcers are making a mess of things. There's the contracting out of court translation services (Applied Language Solutions and then Capita), the army recruitment fiasco (Capita again), the degradation of asylum housing (Serco, G4S and Capita), the dangerous experiment that is Birmingham's Oakwood Prison (by G4S).

Last week disability minister Mike Penning had to make an 'unreserved apology' after news got out that the government's back-to-work assessors Atos had relentlessly pursued a woman in a coma.

Having made what's known in the jargon as a total bollocks of the task, Atos is trying to negotiate an early release from its obligations, blaming death threats.

Regardless of all that, the government has invited Atos to manage the extraction of our personal health data for commercial exploitation and medical research.

Is there no better candidate than Atos? Apparently not.

The winners

When contractors' failures come to light, privatisation's defenders step forward to say that we shouldn't let the odd slip up blind us to the benefits of outsourcing.

Here's economist DeAnne Julius, given a 700 word advertising opportunity by the Financial Times: "It would be wrong to use the cases of G4S and Serco, and their contracts with the Ministry of Justice, to condemn the industry, especially before an investigation of the circumstances has concluded," she wrote. And:


"Using a specialist provider whose reputation and share price are on the line, commissioned and monitored by an in-house procurement team, results in higher reliability, better quality and cost savings – it is better than doing it yourself. It’s a hat-trick too good for the public sector to pass up, especially when money is tight."

Where's the evidence?

The FT describes Julius as "a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee" who "led the Public Services Industry Review (2008) for the department for business".

They neglected to mention her part-time directorships — at Serco (the outsourcer), at Roche Holdings (healthcare and pharmaceuticals), at Jones Lang LaSalle (global real estate), at Deloitte (the Big Swinging Dicks of PFI).

Ruby McGregor-Smith become chair of the CBI's Public Services Strategy Board last year, not long after she'd scooped that £730,000 windfall. “UK business plays a hugely important role in delivering many public services around the country," she said. And:

"It is crucial, at a time when private provision is under intense scrutiny, that we demonstrate the positive impact that the private sector can make in transforming services and generating value for taxpayers through greater competition."

Four years ago she was one of 35 business leaders invited to sign a letter in the Daily Telegraph, urging Chancellor George Osborne to cut public services. Reducing the budget deficit quickly, they claimed, would "deliver a healthier and more stable economy".

They said: "everyone knows that when you have a debt problem, delaying the necessary action will make it worse not better."

The BBC's Robert Peston noted: "there is a whole school of economists . . . who would describe that statement as laughable."

Nick Buckles, ex-G4S

Austerity politics creates work for outsourcers regardless of whether they do things more efficiently than the public sector, or not. The PFI model that accountants have dreamed up keeps capital spending off the government's balance sheet, making the official budget deficit smaller. Pushing public money into private hands shrinks the state and weakens organised labour.

Who gains?

The big accountancy firms who frame the contracts that serve taxpayers so badly are reckoned to have made £1 billion in fees from the Private Finance Initiative.

The winners include management consultants like McKinsey.

And politicians who have taken fees, donations or directorships — like Michael Gove, (Christofferson Robb & Company), Lord Reid (G4S), Alan Milburn (PricewaterhouseCoopers), Virginia Bottomley (Bupa), Lord Darzi (GE Healthcare) . . .

Capita's founder, Rod Aldridge, lent the Labour Party £1 million.

Who gains? Civil servants like David Griffiths. He led the government's review of "probation efficiency", developed the commissioning policy, then jumped ship, becoming director of probation and community services at G4S.

Chris Hyman, ex-Serco

Financier David Metter has made more than £80 million for himself. He owns or co-owns 28 NHS hospitals, 269 schools, the Ministry of Defence HQ, a Scottish motorway and a Welsh jail, according to the Daily Telegraph. (The chief apologist for PFI, here he is running rings around flatfooted MPs on the Public Accounts Committee).

Who gains? The accountants who run the outsource companies: G4S's chief executive Nick Buckles built a fortune of more than £20 million before the fraud scandal forced him out last year. Serco's departed multimillionaire chief executive Chris Hyman (Ruby's former boss) races Ferraris for fun.

Capita's chief executive Paul Pindar trousered £8.5 million last year after cashing in £6 million worth of shares to fund his divorce. He retired last week, to "establish a portfolio of private equity opportunities".

Austerity pays.

Ruby McGregor-Smith's £730,000 windfall is unlikely to be her last. On top of her £1.5 million-a-year, and assuming Mitie's share price keeps rising, this year she is due another mighty windfall. Next year, same again . . .

__________________

Liked this piece? Please donate to OurKingdom here to help keep us producing independent journalism. Thank you.

Thanks to Phil Miller, Tamasin Cave, Jeremy Fox and They Work for You.

Ruby McGregor-Smith's remuneration details appear on pages 52 & 54 of Mitie's Annual Report & Accounts 2013 (PDF here). Her "nil cost" share trade is noted in director dealing records here.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

12,000 Somalis Expelled From Saudi Arabia: Mass Deportations without Considering Refugee Claims

Farhia, a Somali woman who is now eight-months pregnant, was deported to Somalia
from Saudi Arabia on January 29, 2014 after working for 10 years as a domestic
worker. The Saudi authorities have deported at least 12,000 people to Somalia since
January 2014 without allowing any to make refugee claims. Mogadishu, Somalia.
February 8, 2014.(© 2014 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch)

By Human Rights Watch
(Nairobi) – Saudi authorities have deported more than 12,000 people to Somalia since January 1, 2014, including hundreds of women and children, without allowing any to make refugee claims. Saudi Arabia should end the summary deportations, which risk violating its international obligations not to return anyone to a place where their life or freedom is threatened or where they face other serious harm.

Seven Somalis recently deported from Saudi Arabia told Human Rights Watch researchers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, that the Saudi authorities had detained them for weeks in appalling conditions and some said Saudi security personnel beat them. None had been allowed to speak with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to discuss possible refugee claims before being deported. UNHCR said in mid-January that “south central Somalia is a very dangerous place.” UNHCR also said the Saudi authorities have denied its staff access to detained Somalis in the country.

“The Saudi authorities have deported thousands of men, women, and children to conflict-ridden Somalia, while denying them any chance to seek asylum,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher. “Saudi Arabia should allow anyone fearing serious ill-treatment at home to claim refugee status, with help from the UN, if needed.”

The head of Somalia’s Immigration and Naturalization Services told Human Rights Watch researchers on February 3 that Saudi Arabia had deported 12,332 Somalis to Mogadishu since January 1. According to UNHCR,a number of the deportees are not only from Mogadishu but also from other parts of south-central Somalia.

Sadiyo, a Somali woman, told Human Rights Watch that while awaiting deportation
in the Jeddah airport, a police officer struck her inthe back with a baton. Sadiyo was
nine-months pregnant and gave birth on the flight back to Somalia. The Saudi
authorities have deported at least 12,000 people to Somalia since January 2014
without allowing any to make refugee claims. Mogadishu, Somalia. February 8,
2014. (© 2014 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch)

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the Somali Interior Ministry expects Saudi Arabia to deport another 30,000 in the coming weeks. The deportations are part of a Saudi campaign to remove undocumented foreign workers.

Saudi Arabia should immediately introduce procedures allowing refugees, including those from Somalia, to seek asylum or other forms of protection. Children should not be detained because of their immigration status, and unaccompanied children – those traveling alone without caregivers – shouldnot be held with unrelated adults.If Saudi Arabia identifies anyone at risk of harm in Somalia the authorities should give them secure legal status and should work closely with UNHCR, if needed. It should also urgently improve detention conditions for people waiting to be deported, and only detain as necessary and proportional to that need.

The deported Somalis Human Rights Watch interviewed described severe overcrowding, lack of access to air and daylight, sweltering heat, and limited medical assistance in Saudi detention centers as they awaited deportation. All complained about the quality and quantity of the food. One deportee said prison guards beat him repeatedly, and another saw guards beating detainees who complained about conditions. With one exception, none of the detention centers had bedding and detainees slept on the floor.

Somalis said that beatings and other abusive treatment continued during the deportation process. A woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, Sadiyo, who was arrested and deported separately from her husband, told Human Rights Watch that a Saudi policewoman beat her on the back with a baton while she stood in line at Jeddah airport. She went into labor and gave birth on the cabin floor of the plane as it flew to Mogadishu.

“Saudi authorities should investigate allegations of abuse in detention and during deportation,” Simpson said. “The government should immediately improve its dreadful detention facilities.”

One deported Somali, Mohammed, said Saudi authorities detained him in five detention facilities for a total of 57 days before deporting him.

“In the first detention center in Riyadh [the Saudi capital], there was so little food, we fought over it so the strongest ate the most,” he said. “Guards told us to face the wall and then beat our backs with metal rods. In the second place, there were two toilets for 1,200 people, including dozens of children.”

The deportees may risk life-threatening situations or inhuman and degrading conditions in south-central Somalia. In Mogadishu, approximately 370,000 displaced people live in dire conditions in camps for people who have fled famine and violence elsewhere in the country, with inadequate security. Fighting continues in many parts of south-central Somalia. The Islamist armed group al-Shabaab still forcibly recruits adults and children.

Al-Shabaab bombings and other attacks in Mogadishu frequently target or otherwise kill and wound civilians. On February 13, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a car bombing that day outside Mogadishu’s airport, apparently targeting a UN convoy that killed at least six people.

Customary international law prohibits refoulement, the return of anyone to a place where their life or freedom would be threatened or where they would face persecution, torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment.On January 17, UNHCR issued guidelines on returns to Somalia and called on countries not to return anyone before interviewing them and ensuring they do not face the threat of persecution or other serious harm if returned. Both UNHCR and IOM say that Saudi Arabia has not made any such determination before sending the Somalis back.

“Somalia is still wracked by violence that kills and maims civilians, while hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people are barely surviving in insecure camps,” Simpson said. “Saudi Arabia and other countries where Somalis are living should closely examine any refugee claims and other claims for protection Somalis may have.”

Saudi Arabia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have an asylum system. UNHCR, which has a small office in Riyadh, is not allowed to receive and review refugee claims, a process known as “Refugee Status Determination.” The Saudi authorities have no other procedures allowing Somalis or others who fear persecution or other harm in their home countries to seek protection in Saudi Arabia.

Major donors to UNHCR, including the European Union and the United States, should press Saudi Arabia to end its deportations of Somalis.

“The Saudi government is entitled to promote employment opportunities for its own citizens, but it needs to make sure it’s not sending people back to a life-threatening situation,” Simpson said. “Saudi Arabia has no excuse for not offering protection to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Somalis Describe Detention Conditions in Saudi Arabia
Several of the deportees who spoke to Human Rights Watch researchers said they developed chronic health problems in detention in Saudi, including persistent coughing. Some said they saw children detained with their relatives and other adults. One said he was detained with approximately 30 children who were in their young teens and who had no caregiver.

A health worker in Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that she attended a one-year-old boy in a Mogadishu hospital for several weeks. The baby had been detained with his father for a month before being deported and was suffering from diarrhea, malnutrition, and anemia.

Saladu, 35, said the Saudi authorities detained her for nine days with her two children, ages seven and nine, and her sister’s three children before deporting them: “The room we stayed in with 150 other women and children was extremely hot and there was no air conditioning. The children were sick. My son was vomiting and his stomach was very bloated. There were no mattresses, people just slept on the floor.”

IOM publicly said that many of the deportees are in poor health because of their prolonged detention in substandard conditions before they were deported. Some had suffered physical and psychological trauma or had respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia. IOM noted that “a significant number may have been subjected to ill-treatment.”

An IOM representative told Human Rights Watch that it plans to set up a facility at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde airport to provide emergency medical assistance, non-food items such as blankets, and water to deportees, though the services had not begun as of February 17. UNHCR told Human Rights Watch that its staff would be working with IOM to identify those at greatest risk of harm in Somalia.

Deportations of Undocumented Migrants in Saudi Arabia
The mass deportations of Somalis in January followed Saudi Arabia’s deportation of at least 12,000 Somalis to Mogadishu in 2013 and thousands of others in 2012, according to UNHCR.

In November, Saudi officials resumed a campaign that had started in April but had been suspended shortly thereafter, to locate and deport foreign workers considered to be violating local labor laws, including workers from Somalia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, and Yemen. The Saudi Interior Ministry announced on January 21 that it had deported more than 250,000 people since November.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 Yemeni workers deported from Saudi Arabia in November whose descriptions of detention conditions were similar to those of the Somali deportees. Most said there was overcrowding and insufficient food and drinkable water, and reported frequent beatings by prison guards. Five Ethiopian nationals told Human Rights Watch in November that thousands of foreign workers in Riyadh were held in makeshift detention facilities without adequate food and shelter before being deported.

Violence in Somalia
On January 17, UNHCR issued guidelines for factors countries should consider when assessing refugee claims by Somali nationals or other claims for protection based on international human rights law. On January 28, UNHCR issued a news release about the guidelines, appealing to all governments “to uphold their obligations” not to forcibly return anyone to Somalia unless they are convinced the person would not suffer persecution or other serious harm upon return.

UNHCR said that southern and central Somalia “remains a very dangerous place” and that it “consider[s] the options for Somalis to find protection from persecution or serious harm within Southern and Central Somalia to be limited.” The agency said that this “is especially true for large areas that remain under the control of Al-Shabaab,” which “prohibits the exercise of various types of freedoms and rights, especially affecting women” and uses “public whipping, amputation … and beheadings” as punishment.

UNHCR also said al-Shabaab attacks in Mogadishu that killed civilians had increased in 2013 and that the Somali authorities are “reported to be failing to provide much of [the] population with basic security.”

Human Rights Watch has also documented serious abuses by al-Shabaab against civilians, including forced recruitment of children and attacks on people perceived to support the Somali government. The armed group has targeted students, teachers, and school buildings and used schools as firing positions and the students inside as “human shields.”

In March 2013 Human Rights Watch reported on sexual violence and other abuses against displaced persons living in Mogadishu’s internally displaced persons camps.

In January 2013 the Somali government announced plans to relocate tens of thousands of displaced people in Mogadishu. These plans stalled primarily due to the government’s inability to provide basic protection in the planned relocation sites. According to UNHCR, almost 60,000 people were displaced in Somalia in the first nine months of 2013, bringing the total number of displaced to 1.1 million.

A February 13, 2014, Human Rights Watch report documents high levels of rape and sexual abuse against women and girls in Mogadishu in 2013, particularly among displaced women who are attacked inside and near camps for displaced people.

In November UNHCR, Kenya, and Somalia signed a tri-partite agreement setting out procedures to be followed to assist Somalis wishing to return to Somalia. The agreement emphasized that the principle of nonrefoulement needed to be scrupulously respected. UNHCR’s January news release said neither the agreement nor UNHCR’s possible future assistance to help reintegrate voluntarily returning Somali nationals from Kenya should in any way imply that UNHCR believes that Somalia is safe for everyone. The agency reported that 42,000 Somalis fled their country to seek asylum worldwide in 2013.

 Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch