Cerca de 1400 clandestinos morreram este ano no golfo de Aden, 18/12/07

O Público (Lisboa), 18/12/07:

http://ultimahora.publico.clix.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1314196

Cerca de 1400 clandestinos morreram este ano no golfo de Aden

Estimativa do ACNUR no Dia Internacional do Migrante

Reuters

O Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para os Refugiados (ACNUR) estima que 1400 imigrantes clandestinos, na sua maioria oriundos da Somália e Etiópia, tenham morrido afogados nos últimos 12 meses no golfo de Aden, junto à costa Sul do Iémen. Só no fim-de-semana passado, perto de 200 pessoas perderam a vida em dois naufrágios na zona.

“Este foi um ano trágico para o golfo de Aden. Até ao momento, temos indicação de que mais de 1400 pessoas tenham morrido. E estes são apenas números que registámos, na realidade podem ser mais”, declarou Astrid van Genderen Stort, porta-voz da agência da ONU, num comunicado emitido no dia em que se assinala o Dia Internacional do Migrante.

O impressionante número de vítimas acompanha um aumento dos fluxos migratórios entre o Corno de África e os países do Golfo Pérsico. O ACNUR adianta que, desde Janeiro, 300 embarcações, com 28.300 imigrantes, chegaram à costa do Iémen, vindas do Norte da Somália.

Trata-se de um número próximo do atingido em 2006, quando 29 mil imigrantes foram registados pelas autoridades iemenitas, que decidiram apertar o controlo das suas fronteiras marítimas. Face ao cerco policial, aumentam as denúncias de maus-tratos por parte de traficantes e proprietários das embarcações que não hesitam em obrigar os passageiros a saltar borda fora para fugir aos navios patrulha.

Os sobreviventes de um dos naufrágios do passado fim-de-semana contaram à polícia iemenita como os traficantes espancaram os passageiros durante a viagem, com as agressões a aumentarem à medida que as condições do mar pioravam.

O barco acabaria por embater num rocha quando tentava fugir a um navio patrulha, partindo-se em três, antes de se afundar. Dos 270 passageiros, 173 conseguiram atingir a costa, mas os restantes estão dados como desaparecidos.

No dia anterior, outra embarcação, com 148 pessoas a bordo virou-se junto à costa do Iémen, provocando a morte de 58 passageiros, a maioria de nacionalidade etíope. Outras 37 pessoas continuam desaparecidas.

O Iémen é visto por muitos africanos como uma porta de entrada para os países ricos do Golfo Pérsico e mesmo para a Europa e um número crescente de pessoas acabam por arriscar a vida na travessia.

O aumento da instabilidade no Corno de África nos últimos meses provocou um aumento do número de embarcações que deixam o porto de Bossasso, no Norte da Somália, considerado um dos piores centros de tráfico de seres humanos do país, perante a impotência das organizações humanitárias que trabalham na zona

Social Affairs Min.: 2/3 of Ethiopians in Israel need help of social services, em inglês – 08/10/07

Haaretz, 08/10/07

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/910302.html

Social Affairs Min.: 2/3 of Ethiopians in Israel need help of social services

By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent

Two-thirds of all Ethiopian immigrants need the help of the social services, recent data from the Social Affairs Ministry shows. In some towns, some 90 percent of Ethiopian immigrants require such care, numbers which underscore the need for the ministry’s program to help them.

The Ministry has processed or is currently handling cases involving more than 17,000 Ethiopian families with 31,000 children across the country.

Among the families, almost 60 percent – nearly 7,500 families and a total of 41,000 people ¬ are experiencing problems between the husband and wife. Children in such families are classified as at risk of suffering violence or neglect. Nearly 75 percent of Ethiopian families are considered poor.

Sources involved with helping the Ethiopian community said that despite good intentions and funds for helping the families, many counseling programs are not well tailored to answer the community’s needs.

The various social service departments currently offer more than 200 programs for Ethiopian immigrants. These include enrichment courses for both adults and children. The programs are designed to help students enter the job market more easily in a host of fields.

However, only 20 percent of immigrants make use of the schemes. Moreover, only 6 percent of Ethiopian families enroll in counseling programs for the general population, as opposed to programs especially tailored for Ethiopians.

These data prompted the ministry to set up an inter-ministerial project headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to fully categorize and address the problems facing the Ethiopian community in Israel. “There is very scarce use of therapy sessions. They don’t seem to fit in with the immigrant’s outlook,” a statement for the program reads.

The state has decided that everyone should get social services,” says Dr. Edna Bustin, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University’s School of Social Work. “But social care is a Western concept that Ethiopian immigrants are unfamiliar with. They’re not used to intervention, and we do not have the cultural tools to address the familial problems that are endemic to the immigrant population.”

Bustin, who runs a unique enrichment program aimed at helping Ethiopian social care workers deal with domestic violence, says that the problem of violence often stems from the immense frustration of the Ethiopian man in Israeli society.

“The men from the community are under exceptional stress. In Ethiopia, the man represents the family to the outside world. But here, all the social services are geared toward the women and the children,” says Bustin. According to her, it doesn’t help that the people who are offering the services are women.

“Social services in Israel are Western. That suit won’t fit,” says Magist Mengache, director general of the Ethiopian National Project and a social care expert. “Most immigrants won’t even come to receive the services. We have to come to them.”

Mengache, who immigrated to Israel 23 years ago, believes the answer to helping the community lies in recruiting more Ethiopian social workers. “They speak the language, they understand the mentality and they can raise awareness within the community. They can also encourage families to go ahead and receive help from preexisting social service programs.”

But currently, the ministry reserves a quota of only a few Ethiopian social workers. “We have to ask for donations in the United States just to train an additional 10 social workers from the Ethiopian immigrant community. It’s just shameful,” Mengache says.

1,000 Ethiopian immigrants protest plans to halt Falash Mura aliyah, em inglês – 18/12/07

Haaretz – 18/12/07

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/935894.html

1,000 Ethiopian immigrants protest plans to halt Falash Mura aliyah

By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent

Some 1,000 Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated on Tuesday against the government’s decision to close down next week its operation to bring the Falash Mura to Israel.

The protest march left from the Jerusalem International Convention Center and headed towards the Prime Minister’s Office, where the demonstrators blocked the street. Several attempted to break through the PMO fence.

Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel agreed to receive a delegation of demonstrators for a meeting.

The protest’s organizers took issue with ministry figures that show that some 1,500 eligible Falash Mura are still in Ethiopia, and all are expected to arrive here by next June. Ethiopian immigrant associations claim that there are at least 8,500 others who are eligible to immigrate under the government’s criteria.

Both the Interior Ministry and the Jewish Agency, in contrast, charge that these 8,500 people are merely the tip of an iceberg comprising tens or even hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians who want to immigrate to Israel, and if the government were to accede to their demands, the flow would be endless. Israel has absorbed some 30,000 Falash Mura over the last decade despite having no legal obligation to do so, they said, and the time has come to put a stop to the matter.

Ancestors converted to Christianity

The Falash Mura are Ethiopians of Jewish descent whose ancestors converted to Christianity. They are not Jewish according to Jewish law, but in 1999, under pressure from local Ethiopian immigrant groups and American Jewish organizations, the government agreed to bring them to Israel. They are currently arriving at a rate of about 300 per month.

In late 2006, however, the government decided to bring the remaining Falash Mura here and wind up its operation in Ethiopia within a year.

According to the government’s immigration criteria, which are based on a halakhic ruling by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, a Falash Mura must be able to prove their maternal ancestral line is Jewish for seven generations back, have a first-degree relative who is already in Israel and promise to undergo a pro forma conversion upon arrival. Over the last year, the Interior Ministry has refused immigration permits to some 3,000 applicants.

This has outraged Ethiopian immigrant groups. “There are 8,500 people who left their homes and villages and came to Gondar [where the Israeli representatives are based] in the hope of immigrating to Israel,” said Avraham Negusa, who chairs these groups’ umbrella organization. “These are people who have parents, siblings and children already living in Israel. And now, along comes the interior minister and changes the policy.”

Jewish Agency officials also charged that the process is vulnerable to corruption, and in many cases, visa applicants have bribed Ethiopians already in Israel to claim them as first-degree relatives.

In addition, the government accuses American Jewish groups that promote Ethiopian immigration of pressuring Israel to keep absorbing more Falash Mura solely in order to preserve their own raison d’etre. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, addressing the Jewish Agency’s board of trustees last month, said bluntly: “We will not bring in more Falash Mura. If the [American Jewish] organizations want to help them so badly, they should bring them to the U.S.”

American Jewish groups are divided on the issue. The Joint Distribution Committee, which runs a clinic in Gondar, sides with the government. The United Jewish Communities, which in the past had pressured the government on this issue, has since softened its stance, and officials in Jerusalem believe that it, too, will fall in line.

But the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ) is more confrontational. “We don’t make decisions for the Israeli government,” said Joseph Feit, one of its leaders, “but according to the halakhic rulings of Israel’s chief rabbis, and according to opinions by the three religious streams here in the U.S. [Orthodox, Conservative and Reform], the Jewishness of the 8,500 Falash Mura remaining in Gondar should be recognized. Nor would it surprise me if there are more Jews in the villages of Ethiopia.”

NACOEJ has already decided to continue its operation in Ethiopia even after the government closes up shop.

Israeli Ethiopian immigrant groups are planning protests in Jerusalem next week. Several Knesset members also object to the government’s decision, and have asked the state comptroller to examine the issue. The cabinet largely sides with Sheetrit, but Ethiopian groups are hoping for support from Shas leader and Industry Minister Eli Yishai.