Israel and Rwanda have reached a new low point and began to sell and buy asylum seekers

The government of Israel has recently announced that it will start to forcibly deport refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. The Israeli media announed yesterday that Rwanda will recieve $5000 for each refugee deported from Israel.

The response of the human rights NGOs (HRM – Hotline for Refugees and Migrants; ACRI – The Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Amnesty international-Israel; Kav Laoved – Worker’s Hotline; Physicians for Human Rights – Israel; Assaf – Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel and ARDC – African Refugee Development Center):

Israel and Rwanda have reached a new low point and began to sell and buy asylum seekers whom they referred to as “working hands” for the price of $ 5,000 per head. It is impossible to put a price on human lives and this practice must stop immediately. Israel has a moral, historical and international obligation to protect asylum seekers and must take responsibility for the people who reached its borders looking for asylum. Instead, the government has chosen to abuse them, criminalize them, deprive them of their basic rights, imprison them and sell them as “working hands” to African countries. It is disgraceful that Rwanda agreed to trade in human lives and buy refugees from Israel. It is inconceivable that the State of Israel, who pushed to establish international protection for refugees in 1951, will deport them in 2017, forcing them into a dangerous journey in search of asylum.