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Picture from the same article: Inmates at the Holot detention centre in the Negev desert. Photo: Robert Tait
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The men behind
the forbidding barbed-wire topped fence had no doubts about their status.
"This is a
jail. We are prisoners here," said Tumizgie Okebamrime, standing with a
group of fellow African refugees, all with arms raised and interlocked in
symbolic handcuff gestures.
He was speaking
from inside the grounds of Holot, a detention centre for illegal migrants in
Israel's Negev desert which the country's authorities describe as
"open".
But Mr
Okerbamrime, an asylum-seeker from Eritrea, described the isolated encampment
in different terms. "Inside we have police, security guards and
immigration," he said. "I came to Israel because I thought it was a
democratic country. I would never have come here if I had known it was like
this. "
Yards away,
around 1,000 protesters were staging a demonstration, holding placards and
chanting slogans in English and Hebrew, including: "Israel, Feel ashamed! Remember your history! You were refugees
too."
