TEL AVIV – Thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv on Monday in a second day of mass protests against Israel’s immigration policies.
The migrants, primarily from Eritrea and Sudan, marched from downtown Tel Aviv to the embassies, calling for help in the face of Israel’s refusal to grant them refugee status and its detention without trial of hundreds of asylum seekers.
A police spokesman said the march by some 10,000 migrants was coordinated and was peaceful.
Under legislation passed on December 10, authorities can detain illegal immigrants entering Israel for up to a year without trial.
A sprawling detention facility has been opened in the Negev desert to house both them and immigrants already in the country deemed to have disturbed public order.
The demonstrators marched past the Israeli office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, chanting “Wake up UN”.
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