[Update, Jan. 26: “>one of the most heart-wrenching, blatantly unjust human-rights struggles I've ever witnessed, it's hard to imagine the rest of the world isn't consumed by it, too.
But of course I realize Los Angeles has its own problems, and you all still have work and kids and traffic to worry about, and maybe a few of your own human-rights struggles, to boot. But if you do find a free moment today (Wednesday, January 22), the 55,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers and their supporters in Israel urge you: Please put pressure on Israeli authorities to free them from a bleak future of indefinite imprisonment.
“>International Solidarity Day. Protesters at 15 major cities around the globe — Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles (!), Washington D.C., Boston, Toronto, Stockholm, Berlin, Frankfurt, Rome, London, Exeter, Den Haag, Paris — will be rallying outside their respective Israeli consulates in support of Israel's African asylum seekers.
The L.A. leg of the protest begins at 9:30 a.m. outside “>Holot, a desert prison camp for “illegal infiltrators” along the border with the Sinai. (Pictured below.)
 The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, however, said at least 1,000 had been summoned since December.</p>
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And that's just the first round. Asylum seekers who stand in long lines outside the Ministry of Interior every day to extend their work visas, like they've been doing for the past eight years, now say they are instead being handed letters demanding they report to Holot. (The only ones apparently being spared are those who can prove they have a wife and/or children in their care.)</p>
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The worst part, said Darfuri asylum seeker Muhamad Musa, who received one of the dreaded Holot letters, is that “they won't tell us why.”</p>
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Levinksy Park, known in Tel Aviv's northern parts as Little Sudan, was filled with thousands of African protesters this morning, as well as a few dozen Israeli activists sprinkled near the speakers' stage. Worried whispers of “Holot” ran through the crowd like an uninvited ghost. One man had torn out a few stories about Holot from Hebrew-language newspapers, and was examining the photos with a frown. A couple other groups of asylum seekers (pictured below) went through the letters summoning them to Holot line by line, translating where necessary.</p>
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<img decoding=)
“>the last one cost some of them their jobs.
The local Eritrean and Sudanese populations really have no other choice at this point. Israel is finally pressing its mighty thumb down on the lot of them: Those who have not yet been summoned to Holot said they believe it is only a matter of time. And “>African asylum seekers battle fear in South Tel Aviv” and “‘
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