Deporting the South Sudanese? ‘You don’t do that to a friend’

When he was nine years old, Simon Deng became a slave. Having grown up in southern Sudan, he was kidnapped and given as a gift to a strange family in the hostile north, which treated him as if he weren’t human. Only after three and half years of going through hell on earth was he reunited with his family.

Deng later moved to the United States, where he became a noted human rights activist and one of the world’s most recognized faces of the anti-slavery movement. Pro-Israel advocates know Deng for publicly speaking out on the Jewish state’s behalf. Earlier this month, Deng visited Israel on a different advocacy mission: trying to convince the government to reconsider its decision to expel South Sudanese asylum seekers after March 31 — this weekend. (South Sudan became officially independent of Sudan in July.)

“That’s not what you do to a friend. And that’s why I am asking the government of Israel to do more, to do better than what they are doing now,” Deng told The Times of Israel last week in Jerusalem. “I need you now more than ever. I need you now, not tomorrow. Because a friend has to stand with a friend when he’s in difficulties.”

In February, the Interior Ministry suddenly decided to stop renewing visas to South Sudanese migrants. “Starting April 1, we will start deporting them,” Sabine Hadad, a spokeswoman for the ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, confirmed last week. South Sudanese migrants who leave voluntarily will reportedly receive about $1,300 and a plane ticket.

Deng, who lives in New York, wants the Israeli authorities to grant South Sudanese migrants at least one full year to organize themselves.

“I came as a friend of the state of Israel and the Jewish people, to say to the government: Please, can we do this civilly?” Deng said. “Let’s give them a transition period so they can prepare themselves and their kids psychologically that there is some place called home.”

“If you give me 12 months,” he added, “I will appeal to the South Sudanese government to come here and open a liaison office and work on expediting this issue.”

Deng met last week with Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky and a low-level Foreign Ministry official, but no senior government representatives. He left Thursday night with many declarations of sympathy but few commitments in his suitcase.

According to the Interior Ministry, there are currently 3,000 migrants from South Sudan in Israel. Deng, however, says only 700 South Sudanese are presently in the country, and since many are voluntarily leaving, at the end of the month only 400 will be left.

After decades of bloody conflicts with the Arab north, the Republic of South Sudan became independent on July 9, 2011. Israel recognized the new state within 24 hours; Jerusalem and Juba, the current capital of South Sudan, quickly agreed to establish full diplomatic relations. Israeli right-wing politicians said that now that the South Sudanese have their own state, it was time to send those who fled to Israel back home.

‘If deported, asylum seekers may be exposed to grave dangers — from internecine fighting, famine, and lack of basic services like health care and wate’

Last December, the president of the young nation, Salva Kiir, came to Israel and was received by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.

“Israel has supported, and will continue to support, your country in all areas in order to strengthen and develop it,” Peres told Kiir. “For us, the birth of South Sudan is a milestone in the history of the Middle East and in advancing the values of equality, freedom and striving for peace and good neighborly relations.”

Kiir responded in kind. “Without you, we would not have arisen. You struggled alongside us in order to allow the establishment of South Sudan and we are interested in learning from your experience.”

The people of South Sudan indeed see their state as a second Israel, according to Charles Jacobs, an American human rights activist and the president of the American Anti-Slavery Group. “They know that Israel was the first non-Arab state in the region, and they think of themselves as the second,” Jacobs told The Times of Israel. “When I visited Juba and people there learned that I was a Jew, they told me, ‘You are from God’s people. Welcome to my new country. You were the first to defeat the Arab conquerors, and we’re the second.’”

Perhaps ironically, the good relations between Israel and South Sudan are behind Jerusalem’s decision to expel Southern Sudanese migrants. The Prime Minister’s Office, responding to a petition to halt the looming deportations, said that since the establishment of an independent state, asylum seekers are no longer at risk.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, however, disagrees.

“If deported, asylum seekers may be exposed to grave dangers — from internecine fighting, famine, and lack of basic services like health care and water,” the group’s spokesman, Marc Grey, said, adding that women and children would be especially at risk. “Other countries have taken note of these conditions — the United States has extended collective protection for South Sudanese refugees until May 2013.”

It is Israel’s duty to protect asylum seekers within its borders until safe conditions there are verified, he added.

The president of the Eilat-based South Sudan Organization for Development, Moses Gadia, said that he and his fellow asylum-seekers are happy to finally have their own country and are keen on helping to build it.

“But if I go now, where will I put my children? South Sudan was closed [off] for 40 years, there’s nothing is there, it’s a jungle,” Gadia, who arrived via Egypt in 2006 and has since worked at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Eilat, told The Times of Israel. “As a father, I’d be happy to take my children to a place where they start their lives. I’m not even talking about schools, just for them not to stay under a tree.”

Beyond the security situation, Deng wants the South Sudanese refugees currently in Israel to become a bridge between the two countries once they return voluntarily in a year’s time. Having been welcomed in Israel, they would spread the good word about the Jewish state. But if they would be handcuffed on the streets of Israel come April, it would be harder for them to speak well of Israel.

Deng, who is a popular speaker at pro-Israel advocacy events, fears that if Jerusalem were to go ahead and actually deport South Sudanese migrants, it would cost the Jewish state much sympathy. “It will give ammunition to those out there looking for anything to blame Israel for.”

President Kiir went out of his way to demonstrate his friendship to Israel, declaring that his country’s embassy would be built in Jerusalem, Deng said. “And now, immediately after he said that — it hasn’t been three months — this is what Israel is doing to his people. Israel will make the government and President Salva Kiir look like fools.”

Deng wants the South Sudanese in Israel to complete some vocational training here so they can be help in building up the young state. Some 20 South Sudanese are currently enrolled in Israeli colleges and it would be a shame to disrupt their studies, Deng said. “These are your ambassadors. You can’t say to them: stop right here, you’re going home today. We’re trying to build a bridge. Let them be the engineers of the bridge.”

Simon Deng at a rally organized by pro-Israel advocacy organization Stand With Us (photo credit: Courtesy Stand With Us)

“You don’t want to take these kids out of their schools and drop them off at the airport in Juba — these kids will be refugees again, in their own country,” he added. “Let the people continue working so they can accumulate a shekel here and a shekel there so they can prepare themselves for leaving.”

Israel’s nonresident ambassador to South Sudan, Dan Shaham, last week met the country’s vice president, Riek Machar, and reportedly promised that South Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel “will be trained in various skills so they can contribute to the young nation upon repatriation.”

Deng acknowledges that Israel is a tiny country that “needs to be protected and preserved as a Jewish state.” But the government is wrong in assuming that South Sudan is ready to absorb refugees, he cautions. “It’s not a country yet. There is nothing. We just came out of war. We’re eight months old. Nobody ever built a nation in eight months.”