The clinic hosted a class with Mutasim Ali, one of the leaders of the protest of the African asylum seekers and director of ARDC – African Refugee Development Center, an organization dedicated to the rights of African refugees in Israel. Mutasim spoke with the students about the situation of the asylum seekers and the organization's activity in the areas of asylum petitions, education and publicity. He said there are about 44 thousand asylum seekers living in Israel today, most of them from Eritrea and the rest from Sudan and other countries. "There has been a genocide in Darfur since 2003, and there are serious human rights violations in Eritrea," Ali explained. The discussion at the Clinic took place on the same week that the government approved another amendment to the "anti-infiltration" law; the amendment, unanimously approved, determines that asylum seekers will be held in the Saharonim Prison for a period of up to three months, at the end of which they will be transferred to the Holot Detention Center for a period of up to a year and a half – despite previous rulings of the Supreme Court as to the illegality of the prolonged detention. In the course of the discussion, Ali shared with the students his impressions from life at the Holot Detention Center as well as reports of expressions of racism and hate crimes against the asylum seekers community. After speaking with the students about other problems such as the situation of women in the asylum seekers community and the charged relationship of the asylum seekers with residents of southern Tel Aviv, Ali concluded with his hope for a change in Israel's immigration policy that will benefit both its residents and the asylum seekers.
