`It's dangerous for me to go back'
Joseph Elgazi
Haaretz, November 21, 2003
Being deported to their home countries is so frightening
that some foreign workers will risk severe injury or even death to avoid it.
Liou, a 28-year-old Chinese laborer, had been working in construction in Israel for two years without a work permit. On September 15, at 4 A.M., the immigration police raided his building on Bar-Kochba Street in Herzliya. Liou, trying to escape, jumped from a second-story window, sustaining severe injuries to his feet. Seeing that he was unable to stand or walk, the police officers carried Liou to the car and drove him to the police station on Harakevet Street in Tel Aviv. Other
foreign workers who were detained along with him
carried him into the station house. One of the police
officers noticed how swollen his feet were.
After consulting with his colleagues, he told one of the Chinese workers to put him back in the car.
Liou was sure the police were taking him to the hospital for medical treatment. Instead, he says, they drove him to a street near the Central Bus Station, laid him on the ground and left him there. With his last ounce of
strength, he called his brother's girlfriend, a Filipino caregiver, and she told him to take a cab and meet her in Ramat Hasharon. She took him to Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava.
The X-rays showed that he had fractured both heels, and he was hospitalized for nine days. He was operated on under general anaesthesia to reset his ankle bones. The hospital release form said that his left heel was "pulverized" and he might need more surgery on his left
ankle. He was told to keep off his feet for at least six weeks. Today Liou is staying at the apartment of Chinese workers in Jerusalem, who are caring for him.
Liou's attorney, Ahuva Zalcberg, lodged a complaint with immigration police and is suing for compensation. At first, the officer who took her complaint accused Liou of lying. Zalcberg received a letter from the legal department of the Israel Police assuring her the matter was being investigated. This week, the spokesman of the immigration police, Superintendent Rafi Yaffe, said that a special investigator had been assigned to the case
"because of discrepancies in testimony and factual evidence." According to Yaffe, if a foreign citizen held by the immigration police complains of pain, the police must see to it that he receives medical treatment.
Liou is not alone. The watchdog associations protecting the rights of foreign workers have received dozens of reports in recent months of workers who have jumped from windows or roofs in an attempt to flee the police. The injured parties are terrified and refuse to come
forward. They are afraid the police will throw them in jail and deport them anyway. The Chinese workers also fear that the Chinese company that brought them to Israel will find out about their injuries and harm their
families in China if they are unable to abide by their financial commitments.
Elizabeth, 31, a foreign worker from Nigeria, was brought to Israel by a manpower company. She was working at a hotel in Eilat. On September 3, she noticed some police officers approaching her home. In a panic, she jumped out the window and severely injured her spinal column.
After preliminary treatment at the local hospital, she was transferred to Meir Hospital and underwent several bone-setting operations. Today the lower half of her body is paralyzed. She sits in a wheelchair and is being treated in the spinal cord injuries department at Beit
Loewenstein, a rehabilitation hospital in Ra'anana. Elizabeth, who came to Israel alone, has no one to turn to for assistance. The doctors say she will need another two months of hospitalization, and even afterward, will be wheelchair-bound. It is not clear who will pay the hospital bills or cover the cost of the therapy and medical supplies she will need later.
Last week, on Wednesday night, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Jonathan, also from Nigeria, was picked up by the police. The social worker assigned to her at Beit Loewenstein called the foreign workers hot line. She sought their help in finding out where Jonathan - "the only support system Elizabeth has in Israel" - had
been taken. She has asked the authorities to show consideration for Elizabeth's plight and allow Jonathan to remain in Israel for a limited period of time to help organize her life after she is released from the hospital.
The social worker's request has been transferred to the review court for illegal aliens custody, which handles such cases, but she has not received an answer yet.
Xu-Shi was 39 this week. He arrived from China at the beginning of this year and found work in Eilat as a plasterer and painter. One night in August, as the police burst through the door, he climbed to the roof and jumped down. The officers found him lying on the ground unconscious and took him to Yoseftal Hospital.
He was diagnosed with a broken pelvis and spent three weeks there. After being moved to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva for 10 days of specialized orthopedic treatment, he was brought back to Yoseftal. On September 8, he was released, but is now confined to a
wheelchair. It will take a long time for the broken bones to mend, and he may remain an invalid.
With no other option, Xu-Shi left Eilat and went to live with his sister Su-Sha, 54, in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Arad. She used to live in Tel Aviv, but moved after the crackdown of the immigration police. Su-Sha was working as a maid 10 hours a day and more to maintain herself and her brother, and repay their debts to the company that smuggled them out of China
and brought them to Israel via Egypt and Sinai.
Su-Sha has a 16-year old son back in China.
Dead of night
According to the Israeli woman who employs Su-Sha to clean bed-and-breakfast establishments in Arad, the police broke down their door in the dead of the night on August 9. Despite Su-Sha's pleas and explanations that
she was caring for her bedridden brother, she was arrested and sent to Tsokhar, a prison in the western Negev. The Israeli woman tried to help Xu-Shi. She visited his sister in prison, brought her food and contacted the foreign workers' aid associations. They called the immigration police and submitted a request that Su-Sha be released, if only for a few months, until her brother was back on his feet and could return home.
Superintendent Linda Jerbi, a legal advisor for the immigration police, responded as follows: "It is not even certain that Su-Sha is Xu-Shi's sister ... Xu Shi is being cared for by another Chinese woman living in the apartment and the [Israeli woman who employed his sister]."
On the night of November 9, Su-Sha called her Israeli employer to say that she had been released from jail and was at the airport in Lod on her way back to China. She told her: "It's dangerous for me to go back to my city. I still owe a lot of money to the company that brought me to Israel. I hope they won't hurt my son."
On November 11, the Israeli employer took us to Xu-Shi's apartment. To her astonishment, he was not there. She was afraid he had been arrested. The next day, she found out that the landlord had evicted him and he was staying with other Chinese workers. To earn a few pennies, he was reduced to painting fences sitting on a chair. This Monday, the Israeli employer called to say
that during the night, the immigration police had raided the place where Xu-Shi was staying, opening closets and searching under the beds for more workers without permits.
This past June, two Chinese brothers, Piou and Lai, living in the Petah Tikva area, saw someone with a gun in a holster heading for the stairway of their building. Thinking it was a police officer, they panicked and jumped out the window. Both were injured and received
emergency treatment at a nearby hospital. Lai, who hurt his back, was placed in a cast. Piou, who had been a dancer in China, was diagnosed with a comminuted fracture in his left leg. A cast was put on, but no surgery was performed.
Upon release from hospital, Piou went to the clinic of the Physicians for Human Rights organization in Tel Aviv. A volunteer orthopedist told him he needed emergency
surgery, but he did not have the minimum sum to cover such treatment - NIS 5,000. Piou's friends paid half, and the other half was donated by an association that protects the rights of foreign workers.
A terrible fate
At a recent meeting of the Knesset Foreign Workers Committee, Ahuva Zalcberg, chair of the Israel Bar Association's foreign workers committee, spoke about the growing incidence of foreign workers jumping from windows and rooftops. She says that before they arrive in Israel, workers from China pay the Chinese companies who make deals with Israeli contracting firms between $9,000 and $10,000. They borrow this money on the gray market, mortgaging everything they own. If they return
home before repaying their debts, a terrible fate awaits the workers and their families.
"We're not just talking about living in poverty," said Salzburg. "So the moment they realize they will not be able to repay the money they owe, they do everything they can to stay in Israel. They will jump out of a window
when the immigration police knock because they know that, in a sense, deportation is a death sentence."
Jonah Kridar, a senior official of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce who supervises the licensing of manpower agencies, confirmed at the meeting that enormous sums of money are indeed paid by these workers - anywhere from $2,000 in Romania and Bulgaria, to $10,000 in China.
MK Ran Cohen, who heads the Knesset committee,
described the foreign workers this week as "serfs" who are so heavily in debt they often see suicide or causing themselves bodily injury as the only way out. He lamented the fact that the authorities are hunting down these people, instead of the criminals who are responsible for their plight. At the upcoming meeting of
the committee, he said, he would request a report from the immigration authorities on cases of foreign workers being hurt while trying to escape, and would demand to know what steps the police were taking against those who brought them to this state.
(The names of the foreign workers in this article have been changed to protect their identities.)
