Would-Be Refugees Hold Out for a New Life
Cipayung. The room is not big, but there’s just enough room for Fariba to let her four children run around with dolls in their hands. However her youngest daughter, a tired and cranky 2-year-old, clings by her side.
“Playing here is all they do every day,” said Fariba, who didn’t use her real name for security reasons.
The Iranian woman and her children have lived for four months at a refugee shelter operated by Church World Service and located in the hills of West Java, about an hour’s drive from Jakarta. Several thousand miles from home, Fariba said she gambled with her fate so that her children could have better lives.
“It's difficult for me to live as a refugee with four kids,” she said.
Fariba uprooted her family from Iran to follow her then-husband, an Iraqi who was seeking asylum in Indonesia. Because their father is not Iranian, their children weren’t recognized as citizens there, and weren’t entitled to public schooling or any other state benefits.
“At that time I thought I'd follow my husband to Indonesia and get my children educated,” she said.
However, she recently separated from her husband for reasons that she would not divulge, and remains alone with her children, hoping they will be resettled in a third country. It’s a far different and more uncertain world than Iran, where she worked as a makeup artist in a salon.
“All I want is education for my children,” Fariba said. They can’t attend the local Indonesian schools because of the language barrier.
The family have no idea when they might be granted refugee status, which is what all asylum seekers hope for. According to Siti Mariam, a team leader for Christian World Service, every asylum seeker can submit an application through the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees agency. If they meet the criteria, they can be granted refugee status and eventually resettled in another country.
In the case of “Ahmad,” 31, anywhere but Iraq would be fine. He fled from there in 2007, bound for Syria. Ahmad eventually arrived in Indonesia by boat in 2009 through a “good friend from Pakistan who knows people” — meaning human smugglers. He paid $300 to get from Malaysia's Port Klang to Medan, North Sumatra.
In Malaysia, he waited in vain for a year for refugee status, but said he felt his hopes fading with no answers from the UNHCR. From a friend, he heard that the staff of the UNHCR in Jakarta was more “respectful and helpful.” So off he went on a wooden boat, hoping he was traveling towards a new life.
“I received murder threats in my own country,” said Ahmad, a former freelance photojournalist. His father was kidnapped in Iraq and remains missing, which helped convince Ahmad that he had to get out at all costs. He’s now within a stone’s throw of Australia, even though he had no intention of going there when he fled home.
“I just want a safe place, a safe country, a free country,” he said.
He’s now waiting for his refugee application to be approved, and in the meantime stays at a small hotel in Cipayung for Rp 350,000 ($37.45) a month, paid out of an allowance he receives from UNHCR.
“I hope I will leave to Australia or Canada soon,” he said, adding that he had several relatives in Canada.
Maroloan Barimbing, a spokesman for Indonesia's Directorate General for Immigration, said there were more than 1,500 asylum seekers like Ahmed and Fariba scattered across Indonesia, waiting. Some of been here for years, while others came in 2009 as part of a huge spike of boat people arriving in the country.
“We place them in our 13 detention centers,” Maroloan said, “and we also work together with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration.”
However, Maroloan said the centers had long since exceeded their capacity of 1,000 people.
Indonesia saw a phenomenal increase in illegal immigrants last year. According to the Immigration Department, 2,504 people arrived here in 2009, compared to only 369 recorded in 2008.
“Most of them came from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Burma,” Maroloan said.
Among the most well-known case of 2009 was that of 78 Sri Lankans who were picked up by the Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking off Riau Islands last October. They have since left after a protracted standoff to be resettled in several countries, including Australia and Canada.
A group of 255 Sri Lankans who also arrived last October remain aboard a ship docked at Cilegon, Banten. At present, they are still refusing to disembark.
Earlier in 2009, around 400 Rohingyas were found stranded off the coast of Aceh, saying they had fled their military-ruled homeland of Burma. More than half of them escaped from detention centers there and remain at large. The remaining 195 were transferred to an immigration shelter in Medan last December.
Ahmad and Fariba are among the luckier ones. They are free to roam and are given monthly living allowances. Most asylum seekers are put in detention centers with minimal facilities.
In an effort to combat overcrowding at the centers, Maroloan said the central government had opened a new 600-person shelter in Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands.
It’s understandable that Indonesia is a choice destination for asylum seekers. Some interviewed by the Jakarta Globe said it was easy to get an Indonesian tourist visa in their home countries or Dubai or Kuala Lumpur, where refugees with money from Afghanistan and Iraq tend to go first. Or they can pay smugglers to take them by boat from Malaysia to Indonesia.
After months or sometimes years of waiting, some refugees get desperate enough to pay to be taken by boat to the northernmost shores of Australia.
Ahmad said that these days refugees pay up to $8,000 for a boat trip to Australia, thinking that they have a better chance of being resettled there if they are in an Australian detention center. But Indonesian waters can be very hazardous for small boats to travel through, and overcrowding often leads to fatal accidents.
“There is the issue of security in our outer-lying islands,” Maroloan acknowledged.
The problem of refugee seekers using Indonesia as a stepping-stone to Australia has become a serious concern, said Teuku Faizasyah, spokesman for Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He noted that Indonesia and Australia continued to address the refugee issue through the Bali Process, an agreement that came out of a 2002 conference on human trafficking. The process calls for greater cooperation between Indonesia and Australia to combat human smuggling, including intelligence sharing and using law enforcement to go after smuggling networks.
But critics, including police and immigration officials, say Indonesia lacks the capacity to shut down smuggling operations by itself. They say Indonesia can’t be a dumping ground for refugees wanting to get away from their violent homelands. “This is not only Indonesia’s problem,” Teuku said. “This is the problem of the origin, transit, and destination countries.”
Under the highly controversial Indonesia Solution, Australia is providing financial aid to help Indonesia intercept and detain refugee boats and their passengers.
However, the policy has come under fire from activists who highlight the poor quality of Indonesia’s detention facilities, and its failure to sign the UNHCR’s 1951 Refugee Convention on the status of refugees.
“Instead of funding detention centers, the Australian government could be providing humanitarian aid for housing and welfare,” The Asia Pacific Solidarity Network said on its Web site.
A representative of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service said that unstable political situations or ongoing armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and other countries have forced people to seek resettlement in more democratic nations.
“This is a regional problem which requires a regional solution,” said the representative, who declined to be named, via e-mail.
It’s not impossible that one day Ahmad or Fariba might take their chances on a boat instead of waiting for that one phone call from the UNHCR. Their dreams are the same: To find freedom and a better life. And until they get that in their homelands, people like them will always try to find it elsewhere.
With additional reporting by Eras Poke.
“Playing here is all they do every day,” said Fariba, who didn’t use her real name for security reasons.
The Iranian woman and her children have lived for four months at a refugee shelter operated by Church World Service and located in the hills of West Java, about an hour’s drive from Jakarta. Several thousand miles from home, Fariba said she gambled with her fate so that her children could have better lives.
“It's difficult for me to live as a refugee with four kids,” she said.
Fariba uprooted her family from Iran to follow her then-husband, an Iraqi who was seeking asylum in Indonesia. Because their father is not Iranian, their children weren’t recognized as citizens there, and weren’t entitled to public schooling or any other state benefits.
“At that time I thought I'd follow my husband to Indonesia and get my children educated,” she said.
However, she recently separated from her husband for reasons that she would not divulge, and remains alone with her children, hoping they will be resettled in a third country. It’s a far different and more uncertain world than Iran, where she worked as a makeup artist in a salon.
“All I want is education for my children,” Fariba said. They can’t attend the local Indonesian schools because of the language barrier.
The family have no idea when they might be granted refugee status, which is what all asylum seekers hope for. According to Siti Mariam, a team leader for Christian World Service, every asylum seeker can submit an application through the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees agency. If they meet the criteria, they can be granted refugee status and eventually resettled in another country.
In the case of “Ahmad,” 31, anywhere but Iraq would be fine. He fled from there in 2007, bound for Syria. Ahmad eventually arrived in Indonesia by boat in 2009 through a “good friend from Pakistan who knows people” — meaning human smugglers. He paid $300 to get from Malaysia's Port Klang to Medan, North Sumatra.
In Malaysia, he waited in vain for a year for refugee status, but said he felt his hopes fading with no answers from the UNHCR. From a friend, he heard that the staff of the UNHCR in Jakarta was more “respectful and helpful.” So off he went on a wooden boat, hoping he was traveling towards a new life.
“I received murder threats in my own country,” said Ahmad, a former freelance photojournalist. His father was kidnapped in Iraq and remains missing, which helped convince Ahmad that he had to get out at all costs. He’s now within a stone’s throw of Australia, even though he had no intention of going there when he fled home.
“I just want a safe place, a safe country, a free country,” he said.
He’s now waiting for his refugee application to be approved, and in the meantime stays at a small hotel in Cipayung for Rp 350,000 ($37.45) a month, paid out of an allowance he receives from UNHCR.
“I hope I will leave to Australia or Canada soon,” he said, adding that he had several relatives in Canada.
Maroloan Barimbing, a spokesman for Indonesia's Directorate General for Immigration, said there were more than 1,500 asylum seekers like Ahmed and Fariba scattered across Indonesia, waiting. Some of been here for years, while others came in 2009 as part of a huge spike of boat people arriving in the country.
“We place them in our 13 detention centers,” Maroloan said, “and we also work together with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration.”
However, Maroloan said the centers had long since exceeded their capacity of 1,000 people.
Indonesia saw a phenomenal increase in illegal immigrants last year. According to the Immigration Department, 2,504 people arrived here in 2009, compared to only 369 recorded in 2008.
“Most of them came from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Burma,” Maroloan said.
Among the most well-known case of 2009 was that of 78 Sri Lankans who were picked up by the Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking off Riau Islands last October. They have since left after a protracted standoff to be resettled in several countries, including Australia and Canada.
A group of 255 Sri Lankans who also arrived last October remain aboard a ship docked at Cilegon, Banten. At present, they are still refusing to disembark.
Earlier in 2009, around 400 Rohingyas were found stranded off the coast of Aceh, saying they had fled their military-ruled homeland of Burma. More than half of them escaped from detention centers there and remain at large. The remaining 195 were transferred to an immigration shelter in Medan last December.
Ahmad and Fariba are among the luckier ones. They are free to roam and are given monthly living allowances. Most asylum seekers are put in detention centers with minimal facilities.
In an effort to combat overcrowding at the centers, Maroloan said the central government had opened a new 600-person shelter in Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands.
It’s understandable that Indonesia is a choice destination for asylum seekers. Some interviewed by the Jakarta Globe said it was easy to get an Indonesian tourist visa in their home countries or Dubai or Kuala Lumpur, where refugees with money from Afghanistan and Iraq tend to go first. Or they can pay smugglers to take them by boat from Malaysia to Indonesia.
After months or sometimes years of waiting, some refugees get desperate enough to pay to be taken by boat to the northernmost shores of Australia.
Ahmad said that these days refugees pay up to $8,000 for a boat trip to Australia, thinking that they have a better chance of being resettled there if they are in an Australian detention center. But Indonesian waters can be very hazardous for small boats to travel through, and overcrowding often leads to fatal accidents.
“There is the issue of security in our outer-lying islands,” Maroloan acknowledged.
The problem of refugee seekers using Indonesia as a stepping-stone to Australia has become a serious concern, said Teuku Faizasyah, spokesman for Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He noted that Indonesia and Australia continued to address the refugee issue through the Bali Process, an agreement that came out of a 2002 conference on human trafficking. The process calls for greater cooperation between Indonesia and Australia to combat human smuggling, including intelligence sharing and using law enforcement to go after smuggling networks.
But critics, including police and immigration officials, say Indonesia lacks the capacity to shut down smuggling operations by itself. They say Indonesia can’t be a dumping ground for refugees wanting to get away from their violent homelands. “This is not only Indonesia’s problem,” Teuku said. “This is the problem of the origin, transit, and destination countries.”
Under the highly controversial Indonesia Solution, Australia is providing financial aid to help Indonesia intercept and detain refugee boats and their passengers.
However, the policy has come under fire from activists who highlight the poor quality of Indonesia’s detention facilities, and its failure to sign the UNHCR’s 1951 Refugee Convention on the status of refugees.
“Instead of funding detention centers, the Australian government could be providing humanitarian aid for housing and welfare,” The Asia Pacific Solidarity Network said on its Web site.
A representative of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service said that unstable political situations or ongoing armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and other countries have forced people to seek resettlement in more democratic nations.
“This is a regional problem which requires a regional solution,” said the representative, who declined to be named, via e-mail.
It’s not impossible that one day Ahmad or Fariba might take their chances on a boat instead of waiting for that one phone call from the UNHCR. Their dreams are the same: To find freedom and a better life. And until they get that in their homelands, people like them will always try to find it elsewhere.
With additional reporting by Eras Poke.
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