Itongadol/AJN.- Asylum seekers say they have nothing to lose; nationwide strike to be extended until Israeli gov\’t meets demands of protesters, say migrants.
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.