Wang Ka. His name and phone number were passed around Chinese workers all over Israel. (Photo by Nir Kafri)

During a hearing she conducted in Ma'asiyahu prison for Yang, Ben Shaul-Weiss offered him the option of being released from jail until his testimony against the policeman, but Yang firmly refused. Because she thought there was a misunderstanding, otherwise why would someone voluntarily choose to remain in prison, she dialed Wang Ka's cell phone. "She said: `I want to release him, but he says he doesn't want to be released,'" Wang Ka related. "She said `you explain to him' and let me speak to him on the phone. He told me in Chinese that he is afraid that outside they will arrest him again and expel him. I told him: `If you want, you can get out of jail as soon as today. I promise that nothing will happen to you. On Tuesday, you and I will go together to court and there you will relate exactly what happened to you.'"

This was not the first time the court and Interior Ministry officials were assisted by Wang Ka's fine translating skills. Since a new procedure went into effect allowing workers to find a new employer before their permit expires, he has traveled several times a week to Ma'asiyahu Prison and after working feverishly all day, put employers and workers in touch and found legal jobs for hundreds of his countrymen. Only for himself was Wang Ka unable to obtain a permit. Two and a half months ago, however, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz did decide to issue him with a permit so that he could assist the Interior Ministry with translations in a legal and formal manner, but a week ago, the minister retracted his decision, just like that.

Going underground

Wang Ka, the son of a poor family from Szechuan, arrived in Israel some seven years ago at the age of 19. Like many before and after him, he came with a group of construction workers who were dazzled by Chinese recruiters' promises of huge salaries, in Chinese terms. His motive, he says, was also adventurousness: "I knew that if I didn't leave China with the construction company, I would never get to know anything outside of China, other than on television. I wanted to get to know someplace else."

He soon sobered up as did most members of Wang Ka's group when they realized that there was no resemblance between the promised salaries and what they actually received, and after being dismissed before the end of their contracts, chose to cut their losses and returned to China. Wang Ka decided to stay and went into the underground of illegal foreign workers. For months he roamed around Ashdod, Holon and Tel Aviv, slept on benches and searched for work that might him earn enough to cover the cost of a pita with shawarma. "The street was like university for me," he said. "During that time I learned Hebrew, a little Romanian, I learned how to look for a job, how to find an apartment, how to talk with the landlord. I learned many things during that time."

When it turned out that Chinese workers were willing to pay thousands of dollars for a permit, and hundreds had been brought to Israel on false premises, Wang Ka found himself serving more and more as a guide to the perplexed others. What he himself had learned from the Romanians and Thais, he taught to his countrymen, and more than that, he was their source of information on what rights they had and the limits of their exploitation.

His name and cell phone number were passed among the Chinese workers all over Israel and he found himself traveling to Be'er Sheva and Haifa, accompanying people to the police station in Jerusalem and to courts in Tel Aviv, and helping them complain about cases of theft, beating and extortion.

"At first I was afraid to go to the police, because I'm illegal," he says, "but Sigal [Rosen, of the Hotline for Migrant Workers] told me that if I go for this kind of matter, they won't do anything to me." He did not go as an official translator, but as a friend and confidant. "The Chinese trust me," he says, "because I'm not doing it for money and I'm also like them: illegal. I tell them exactly what the landlord says and also explain the law to them."

The assistance he provided the police (once he brought about the arrest of a violent extortionist after he filed a complaint against him on behalf of his friends who had been the extortionist's victims; another time he helped the police close a massage parlor operated by foreign workers) did not help him.

In late April, 2003, the Immigration Police arrested him and some friends during a planned raid. In a phone conversation from jail at the time, he told how at 4:30 A.M., the south Tel Aviv apartment he was living in was surrounded by a force of around 10 policemen and how, as he was opening the front door as they had requested, the policemen broke down the back door and arrested him and the friends who shared the apartment with him. His friends, who had valid permits, were released a short time later; he remained in jail.

Even in jail, after he recovered from the initial shock, he generously offered his talents and services. "There was a Thai they were making trouble for, but he was afraid to say anything bad about his landlord. I told him `call your embassy, maybe they'll help,' because I know that the people at the Thai embassy show up in ties and suits and they help. There was a Romanian whose finger was cut at work. I told him: `you don't have a problem; your finger is gone. I can give you the number of Kav La'Oved, in the end you might even get some money and you might even get to be legal."

He was in jail for three months until being released on a bond. The release came after appeals from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Kav La'Oved and Physicians for Human Rights, which asked to give him legal status here because of his contribution to the state, and because in China he would face danger from criminal elements that he helped to indict.

Attached to the request were letters of recommendation from police investigators. "I would like to cite his wonderful and important contribution," wrote one policeman and specified, "various departments in the Yiftah district, as well as investigation department A and the crime department, were greatly assisted by Wang Ka in the translation of interrogations ... he showed up whenever asked, even if that meant coming in the middle of the night."

Sigal Rosen said Wang Ka's intervention, whether in convincing workers who had been exploited or beaten to complain to the police or translating their complaints, contributed significantly to the protection of the rights of Chinese workers in Israel, and "in my opinion, that is as important for the country's image as victories on the soccer field."

Six months waiting

Since then, for six months, Wang Ka has been waiting for the Interior Ministry's response. He cannot work because he does not have a work permit and because he has become known, he cannot allow himself to violate the terms of his release on a bond. Two and a half months ago, when attorney Ben Shaul-Weiss said she would not extend the terms of his release on bond any longer, Minister Poraz announced that he was granting Wang Ka a permit so that he could assist the Interior Ministry in a legal and formal manner in its work with Chinese foreign workers. Since then, Wang Ka has been even more careful and does not even enter a construction site, lest he be suspected of working.

He says he was left with nothing and in the past few months has been surviving on invitations to meals from friends and occasional donations. "Sometimes Chinese people come up to me on the street, put a hundred shekels in my pocket, or two hundred shekels and run away," he said, "I don't ask because I know that the Chinese are in a very tough situation." He figures that if he is indeed expelled, the situation of the Chinese will be even tougher. "Many Chinese don't have a passport and if the police take them, even if they're legal, no one can help them. They don't even have a phone number of someone to call."

In the meantime, he continues in his self-appointed task of protecting foreign workers from extortion and exploitation. Yesterday, a day after his release on bond expired, he overcame the fear of arrest and went to escort two countrymen to the Tel Aviv District Court, where they were appealing their arrest some two weeks ago. The Immigration Police arrested them when they came to an employment fair and Wang Ka sought to ensure that their words would be heard without distortions. Sometimes he regrets having come to Israel specifically. "If I had gone to America, I would already have citizenship," he says, "and if not - at least I would know English."

Yesterday, his release on bond again expired and Attorney Ben Shaul-Weiss has already announced that it will not be renewed again. Despite his numerous appeals through the foreign workers hotline, Wang Ka has yet to receive an unequivocal answer on whether Interior Minister Poraz will indeed uphold his promise and grant him legal status. After more than two months of waiting, he says, he can't even ask for money for a plane ticket. "Before, I could have asked my friends, because I helped them a lot, but they've already given me a lot. I thought that in the end I'd have work and I'd be able to pay it back, but now I don't know what will be."

Wang Ka has still not received an official answer from the Interior Ministry, but Minister Poraz's media adviser, Tibi Rabinowitz, told Haaretz, "We tried to somehow make him our assistant, but that too was resolved using people whose legal status was slightly less problematic. Therefore, we will not be able to let him remain here."