(Photo by Nir Kafri)

The ministry allowed contractors to come to Ma'asiyahu Prison and "collect" the two and bring them to work at their construction sites. The permission that was given to the contractors is anchored, it turns out, in a new procedure that came into effect a few months ago. Under it, the contractors do not have to commit themselves in advance to the length of time during which they will employ the persons under arrest. The Interior Ministry and the Immigration Police agree to "take them back" any time the contractor decides he has no use for them any more.

Judging by the case of Wo and Qiu, the authorities are also not strict with the contractors about the date the detainees' work starts. The contractor who agreed to hire the two men asked that the state keep them in Ma'asiyahu until the strike at the ports ends; only after he receives the raw materials he needs, which are being held up at the port and are necessary for their work, will it be "convenient for him to collect them," he explained. The Interior Ministry and the Immigration Police agreed to this request. When the strike ended, the contractor asked that the two be kept in jail until after the holidays. This request, too, was accepted. The judge who deliberated on this case called this phenomenon "slave trade." However, apparently because of "lack of authority," she did not order the state to stop the practice or release the detainees.

Like market merchandise

Wo Donglin and Qiu Yingqian came to Israel in August, 2002, with work permits in their passports that were valid for one year. Each of them paid $10,000 for this permit. At the offices of the Chinese manpower company, which is a partner of a local manpower company that arranges employment permits at the Employment Service, they were promised that their Israeli employers would see to the renewal of the permits so that they would be able to work in Israel for at least two years. A period of less than two years makes the payment not worth it.

On August 18 of this year, immediately after their original permits became invalid, the two were arrested at their place of work by the Immigration Police. Their employer, who apparently did not need them any more, had not requested renewal of their permits. Thus the two unwittingly became illegal residents in Israel. They suspect that it was their employer himself who called the authorities to the work site.

The two were transferred to Ma'asiyahu and there, deportation orders against them were issued. There it was also decided to apply the "closed skies" procedure in their case, a procedure that was implemented following the government's decision to cease admittance of new foreign workers. Under this procedure, the Interior Ministry allows certain employers to come to the prison, to interview the candidates for deportation and to select the workers who suit them.

Someone who was present in such a situation describes the contractors' representatives who come to the prison as though they were "coming to check out the merchandise in the market." But this terrible scene also has another aspect.

"It really does look like a slave market," says Sigal Rosen, director of the Moked Hotline for Migrant Workers, "but the person who is sitting in jail prior to deportation sees things in a completely different light. He paid thousands of dollars in China and if he is deported, he will not recoup even part of what he paid. For a person like that, this terrible arrangement is a lifeline."

According to Rosen, most of the detainees at Ma'asiyahu are Chinese. Manpower companies, which discovered that they can charge very high broker's fees in China, have been bringing many workers over from there in recent years. However, at the prison, contractors prefer to choose Romanian or Turkish workers, who are considered stronger and more disciplined.

It was nearly two weeks after the men's arrest that Carmi Aviyahu Construction and Renovations agreed to employ Wo Donglin and Qiu Yingqian. David Englestein, one of the directors of the company, visited Ma'asiyahu on August 28 and selected them, along with others, for work. The Immigration Police released the two from arrest immediately and the Interior Ministry canceled the deportation orders and granted them new work permits that were supposed to be valid until December 31, 2003.

On August 31 they began to work. But unlike the other workers whom the company took from prison that day, their employment was terminated on September 30. According to their work cards, which are in the possession of Moked Hotline for Migrant Workers lawyers, the two worked for the entire period at the same site, about 10 hours a day.

On the afternoon of September 30, one of the foremen told them that it had been decided to transfer them to a different contractor. The two were asked to collect their belongings and go with Englestein to their new place of work. After a short drive, they discovered that they had been taken to Ben-Gurion International Airport. There Englestein "returned" them to Interior Ministry officials. He also provided a handwritten letter, on company stationery, in which he explained that the two were not suitable for working in his company. Upon receipt of this letter, ministry officials revoked their work permits. The deportation orders were renewed and the two were returned to Ma'asiyahu Prison. Englestein has refused to respond with respect to the details of the case.

Eye-opening document

Wo and Qiu contacted the Moked hotline. Three days later they appeared at Ma'asiyahu before the "Court for the Supervision of the Custody of Illegal Residents," which is authorized to determine the legality of the arrest of foreign workers. Attorney Dror Meir, who is handling their case on behalf of Moked, related their story to the judge at the court, Sharon Bavli-Larry. She approved their continued detention, but in her decision, she wrote the following: "It is not at all clear to me according to what unacceptable custom the employer believed that foreign workers are merchandise, for which they can receive credit at a prison or a custodial facility any time they feel like it. Is acceptable that in the State of Israel in the 21st century, employers (who receive hiring permits from the Interior Ministry and the Employment Service of the State of Israel!!!) behave like slave traders???"

The answer to this question - which is apparently not directed at the employer - was presented by the state. Attorney Meir petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court against the continued detention of the two men. Attorney David Guttman, from the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office, submitted to the court a document that explains that the contractor, who, according to Bavli-Larry, behaved like a slave trader, had acted in fact according to an official procedure that was put in writing and approved by the Interior Ministry.

This document is an eye-opener. Despite its clean and laundered legal language, it succeeds in revealing the real nature of this policy: Wo and Qiu, explained Guttman on behalf of the state, are illegal residents who, under the closed skies procedure, "were relocated to a new employer." Regrettably, this relocation was unsuccessful, said the attorney, "and the employer declared that they were not suitable for employment in his framework ... In these circumstances, in which an employer is not interested and not prepared to engage workers, the workers' work permit is revoked and their stay in Israel becomes illegal."

Guttman promised the court, however, that the State of Israel will continue to make every effort to "relocate" Wo and Qiu again, until such time as it is possible to implement the expulsion orders that the Interior Ministry has issued against them. In his petition to the court, attorney Meir asked that the ministry grant the two tourist visas for a period of 30 days, so that they can look for suitable work themselves. But the state, replied Guttman, cannot agree to that request: "A person who in the past chose to stay in Israel illegally," he wrote, "is not entitled to be given a tourist visa for 30 days, as there is a real suspicion that the person will be absorbed into the population and it will be impossible to find him. The case of the applicants, therefore, is being dealt with under the closed skies procedure."

The Interior Ministry response: "This procedure is aimed at helping contractors whose allotment of workers has not been filled. In the case in question, the contractor who received workers in this way, after he had employed them for a certain period, found that they are unsuited to him and acted appropriately to return them to custody, where the workers had been previously. Although according to the procedure, for every worker there will be only one attempt at relocation, the Interior Ministry has agreed ... to carry out another relocation."

Since the petition was filed almost three weeks have gone by, but Judge Uzi Fogelman, to whom the petition was submitted, has not yet made a ruling regarding the case. A request to hold an urgent deliberation, which was submitted by attorney Meir last week, was rejected by Judge Varda Alsheikh, who returned the case to Fogelman. On Monday Fogelman reviewed the documents in the file and postponed deliberation until an as-yet undetermined date.

The new relocation efforts by the Interior Ministry are also proceeding at a snail's pace. A representative of the Ashtrom construction company, who visited Ma'asiyahu on October 8, expressed a willingness to hire the two, along with 14 other workers. By the time he completed the necessary bureaucratic procedures, four days went by during which the port strike began.

"These procedures," Guttman reported to the court, "were completed only on Sunday, October 12, and the Ashtrom representative arrived at the Ma'asiyahu facility in order to release the 16 detainees. When he arrived, he suddenly announced that he had received instructions from his superiors not to accept the workers as, because of the port strike, the raw materials had not been unloaded, and therefore in fact the Ashtrom was unable to engage the workers at this time."

The state, Guttman promised again, would continue its relocation efforts. Three days later, a representative of another company, the Haim Zaken company, visited the prison. Interior Ministry representatives, who apparently wanted to arrange the employment of Wo and Qiu before the court gets around to deliberating on their petition, tried to convince him to choose them. The man refused and the ministry representative at the prison, Shalom Yehoshua, told Rosen of the Moked hotline that he explained his refusal by saying "their teeth are rotten."

Yehoshua also read to Rosen a letter he had received several days earlier from the manpower director of the company. Yehoshua was told the director intended to interview workers at the prison between October 7-9. The man added that he wished to "withdraw the workers only after the holiday."