“Molugeta, a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Eritrea, was one of the first to be interviewed and informed that he had to leave for Rwanda. The interview took 15 minutes and was videotaped in its entirety, Molugeta said. The interviewer, an Ethiopian Israeli, spoke to Molugeta in Tigrinya, Eritrea’s national language. ‘She told me, ‘they’re sending you to Rwanda. If you don’t go to Rwanda, they’ll put you in Saharonim [Prison],’ he said. ‘I told her that I can’t go to Saharonim and I can’t go to Rwanda. I came to ask for asylum. At first they accepted me. Why are you returning me now?’ She said, ‘That’s the law in Israel.’ Rwanda is not good now. My friends went there and everyone ran away to somewhere else. Everyone says the place is not good.’
“Molugeta said he was asked to sign a document in Hebrew, which he doesn’t know how to read. She explained to him that it was a declaration that he was refusing to leave Israel, which he refused to sign.
“Molugeta, who fled Eritrea to avoid forced, indefinite military service and came to Israel six years ago, applied for asylum and was denied six months ago. ‘I’m waiting. If they force me to go to Saharonim I’ll go. … I’ll stay here in prison, what can I do?” He said his friends said they would also go to prison if they had no choice.'” FULL STORY
