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African asylum seekers in Israel march on Jerusalem to protest conditions

In defiance of the High Court of Justice, Israel is detaining hundreds of people while claiming they are free.
Israeli immigration policemen force an African migrant onto a bus headed to a prison, during a protest in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem December 17, 2013. Israeli police on Tuesday sent back to custody more than 150 African migrants who had abandoned a desert holding facility in protest of a new law allowing them to be kept there indefinitely. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM - Tags: SOCIETY IMMIGRATION POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTX16MBK

If officials in a foreign country to which you had fled forced you and hundreds of your compatriots to live in isolation in the desert, surrounded by a fence and armed guards to monitor your every move, limited the public transport available to take you elsewhere during the few hours between mandatory headcounts and gave strict orders to stay inside at night, it would be fair to say that you were in detention.

Israeli officials, however, do not want to use the word "detention" for what is taking place at their new “center” to house Eritrean and Sudanese nationals, mostly asylum seekers, in the Negev Desert. The Holot Center for Residents opened on Dec. 12 with the transfer of 480 migrants there from the Saharonim Detention Center. Officials created the facility after the High Court of Justice ruled in September that detaining asylum seekers in Saharonim was unlawful.

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