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During the past two months, dozens of Sudanese migrants have been summoned to immigration and population authority offices to renew their residence permits. While there, they discovered – much to their surprise – that authority officials had changed the country cited as their point of origin from Sudan to South Sudan.
While immigration authority officials deny that this change is part of an agenda to deport foreigners, some migrants are skeptical about this disavowal.
One of the refugees whose permit has been altered is Roni Tartin, a former Sudanese athlete who holds a number of medals as a competitor in track and field competitions. “Had Roni represented us in the Olympics, perhaps Israel’s contingent would have returned with a medal,” claims one of the many Arad residents who have mobilized on Tartin’s behalf.
Tartin, who fled from the border of Sudan and South Sudan in 2006, arrived in Israel in 2008 after an arduous two-and-a-half-year journey, he relates.
“I was very frightened by soldiers from Sudan’s army,” Tartin recalls. “They told me that if I didn’t fight against my neighbors from my hometown, they wouldn’t let me participate in track meets, and so I decided to flee.”
After two years in Egypt, Tartin reached Israel, where he worked in a Dead Sea region hotel. He took up residence in Arad, together with his wife Yusila and their daughter Viviana, who was born in Egypt. Their son Rafael, now 4, was born in Israel.
About a month ago, Tartin says he went to the immigration authority offices to renew his permit, and discovered that his residence permit papers had been altered. His place of origin was now listed as South Sudan, not Sudan. “When I left the office I discovered that they had changed the place where I came from. The papers say South Sudan. I don’t understand why that happened,” he says.
In Arad, Tartin has become a symbol of the campaign against the expulsion of migrants. Local residents help him feed his children, as he is now unemployed. “I worked for a long time at one of the Dead Sea hotels, but now that they’ve changed my permit documents, nobody wants to hire me,” he says. Dozens of Arad residents visited his family home to offer his wife and children their support after Tartin was summoned to the immigration authority offices.
Roni has taken on a role as a kind of mediator between veteran residents in Arad and the migrants living there. “Roni is very active in the community,” explains Tova Ben Tzvi-Marak, an Arad resident and a member of the Keshet group, which works for intra-cultural cooperation. “He receives phone calls from people in both populations, and he takes responsibility for relations between them, and for solving problems in relations between the veteran and migrant groups. Roni has become a well-known figure in Arad.”
Intellectuals and artists in Arad have also mobilized on Tartin’s behalf. Saturday, a solidarity run was staged to help Roni; the event was organized by David and Ana Wapner, writers who live in Arad, along with the nonprofit Alma, which is comprised of cultural figures and intellectuals from Arad.
“We’ve come to know Roni,” says David Wapner. “We know him as a person with strong values and desire who won’t give up on his future. The way to help the refugees is not to present them as vulnerable victims, but rather as people who have their futures ahead of them, along with a past history. We have come to appreciate Roni’s individuality. Our goal is to pressure decision-makers and force them to restore the migrants’ original identity. As things stand, the immigration authority has stolen this identity, an identity which enabled them to be recognized as refugees. Our second goal is to help Roni continue his career as an athlete.”
Roni, meanwhile, says he’s nervous he will be deported from Israel due to the change in his residence permit. “I don’t want to return there. I have nowhere to go back to,” he says. “Were I to return, I’d be sent to prison for 20 years, and who knows what they’d do to me there.”
The immigration and population authority said in response: “There is a group of people who hail from areas in Sudan whose exact geographic dimensions have been under review. Assuming that it is decided that they are not from South Sudan, they cannot at this stage be expelled.”
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