‘Stop playing politics’: refugees stuck in Indonesia rally against UNHCR for chronic waiting

Chrisanthi Giotis, University of Technology Sydney

One evening last month, the young man from Afghanistan, of Hazara ethnicity, arrived in Jakarta. His people-smuggler dropped him at the UNHCR entrance reserved for refugees, where he was told to wait.

The next day, mid-morning, he was still outside waiting to speak to someone. He was too afraid to give me his name or even his age, but he appeared to be in his early 20s.

He had been fleeing for 20 days, ten days hiding in wait in Kabul, then another ten days in transit through three countries. His choice to come to Indonesia was based solely on escaping immediately.

Through a translator he said:

I needed to get out quick. I just wanted to come as soon as possible so I came through an agent. My agent brought me here, I have no shelter so I am just waiting for the UNHCR for information.

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I’ve been working with a refugee-run school in Indonesia for the past year. There, refugees aren’t allowed access to education or work, and asylum seekers can be arrested at the whim of authorities. This, compounded with chronic waiting, has led to a straining relationship with the UNHCR, the key institution in their lives.

Only 509 of 14,016 people (3.5%) were resettled in Indonesia last year. Of those , only 84 came to Australia. And so far this year, the number of people resettled from Indonesia to Australia is just eight.

Figures like these explain why, for many months now, the UNHCR office in Jakarta has been the subject of ongoing protests made up of street protests outside the building in the city centre and civil disobedience in the upscale suburb of Kalideres. Refugees and asylum seekers have refused to vacate a disused military building temporarily allocated to them.

Like false advertising

Refugees argue the very existence of the UNHCR Jakarta office is a kind of false advertising.

Twenty-four-year-old Ali Jawad Haidari has been in Indonesia for over seven years. He said:

If you cannot support refugees you should close your office. You should say we cannot support refugees, announce in the media we cannot do anything.

At Kalideres, the broken trust is visceral. People question the staff’s willingness to prosecute cases, and why they visited Kalideres with security guards when there was never a hint of violence in the months of protest (and for that matter, why they were not allowed to enter the main UNHCR building through the front door).

They also questioned the ethics of the UNHCR, when the institution offered a one-off payment of roughly a month’s living expenses to the refugees in exchange for leaving the Kalideres site. The refugees initially thought this would be the beginning of ongoing UNHCR support.

And they questioned why the agency supposed to protect them would turn off their electricity and water.

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In fact, “The UNHCR is making me sick” is a refrain I heard multiple times during interviews.

Hassan Ramazan, a spokesperson for the Hazara refugees at Kalideres, said the sit-in protests exist because their community and the relatives who support them by sending cash, are at breaking point. He said:

There are people here since 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, their supporters can not support them any more.

The refugees who wait

Ramazan also points to the seeming arbitrariness of resettlement. Interview wait times to determine refugee status vary, with some who arrived more recently resettled than those who’ve been waiting for years.

What’s more, single men believe they are treated with suspicion in western countries. Twenty-eight-year-old Muhammad Hanif is one of those single men, who received his refugee registration in 2013. He said:

Lots of singles have been here seven or eight years, we also pray for families to be resettled, but also for us, it should be fair.

And Haidari points out people may have arrived alone but are still family members – brothers, sons, fathers.

My friend arrived alone and is still waiting. Recently his 13-year-old son was injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan, spent two months in hospital, and still the UNHCR said they can’t do anything.

My friend when he came here his son was six, now he’s 13-years-old and injured.

Work rights could alleviate chronic waiting

Waiting is a contemporary strategy of migration management.

But chronic waiting must be taken into account in refugee policy, as it causes and prolongs psycho-social damage and changes the nature of societal and institutional relationships.

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The right to work can empower refugees in Malaysia

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For the majority of refugees, chronic waiting is unlikely to result in effective protection unless a refugee’s country of origin becomes safe to return to. This is unlikely in the foreseeable future for the major refugee producing countries.

Even in countries with major refugee populations, their plight is mostly ignored.

But not always. In Malaysia – where the refugee population is ten times that of Indonesia and work has been informally accessed for years – there are moves to make work legal for refugees.

Work could help alleviate economic pressures and restore agency and dignity lost in waiting. But the refugees are keenly aware of Indonesia’s local poverty and insecure work conditions. And because Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it is not obliged to look after refugees.

Masooma, her two-year-old daughter Zahra and her husband Ali are one of the families protesting in Kalideres.
Author provided

Nevertheless, ways for refugees to sustain themselves are supposedly being discussed in Indonesia.

For Haidari, a martial arts champion, work would solve many of his problems. But the authorities have stopped him from competing. He said:

If I could just fight I would never knock on the UNHCR door again.

Refugee spokesperson Ramazan doesn’t see work rights as the ultimate solution, but he does ask what sort of generation is being created. They’re living on the streets, without access to education or the example of seeing their parents work.

Thirty-seven-year-old Masooma, who is in the Kalideres complex with her husband and two-year-old daughter, has another, pointed, question.

They say the first priority is for people with critical problems, who are sick, and that’s the reason resettlement is slow.

Since they don’t give us support and assistance of course we will get sick, and then what should we do with that process? What will we do if we get sick and then go to another country?

Essentially, there is no point in breaking people, then helping them.

Chrisanthi Giotis, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shorten pledges $500 million for UNHCR in border protection policy

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Bill Shorten has promised Labor will commit $500 million over five years to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in a policy designed simultaneously to reassure voters and satisfy the party on the politically sensitive issue of border protection.

This was among proposed new measures on asylum seeker policy the opposition leader announced to the ALP national conference on Monday morning, preempting a debate later in the day, to ensure internal party differences were minimised.

He said the $500 million would directly improve orderly regional processing and resettlement in the region and countries closer to where refugees originally came from. The funding would “speed up legitimate settlement pathways – it will deny people smugglers a product to sell”.

Portraying Labor as tough on borders, but humanitarian on refugees, Shorten said that if he became prime minister, he would take immediate advice from the chief of the Australian Defence Force, the Home Affairs Department, ASIO and other agencies about Australia’s state of preparedness to disrupt people smuggling operations before people departed.

Labor would triple the number of Australian Federal Police working overseas to stop people smugglers and prevent people even contemplating getting on boats.

An ALP government would expand the existing community sponsored refugee program from the current number of 1,000 to 5,000.

“This means state and local governments, community organisations, businesses and unions and faith-based institutions will be able to sponsor humanitarian entrants into Australia and support the economic and social integration of refugees into communities,” Shorten said.

He said the expansion would be in addition to Australia’s existing humanitarian intake, so a Labor government would take more refugees overall as part of its migration mix.

Shorten reaffirmed Labor’s commitment to turnbacks and offshore processing, saying “it is not a crime to want to come to this country. But it is a crime to exploit vulnerable people to put them in dangerous and unsafe vessels and have them drown at sea”.

“We cannot, we must not, and we will not permit the reopening of their
trade in human desperation and the drownings and the irreplaceable loss of life that it brings.”

This required pursuing regional resettlement, turning back boats when it was safe to do so and maintaining offshore processing.

“But also … we understand that keeping our borders secure, and keeping people smugglers out of business should and never has meant leaving women and children to languish for years and years in indefinite detention in sub-standard facilities and unacceptable conditions”

“It has never meant allowing peoples’ mental and physical health to deteriorate whilst under direct or indirect Australian care. It has never meant fighting every step of the way against medical advice which says that more needs to be done to treat people”

“I believe that Australia can meet our international humanitarian and legal responsibilities without compromising our national security for a commitment to strong border protection,” Shorten said.

A Labor government would take up New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees from Manus and Nauru by immediately negotiating an agreement on similar terms to the current deal with the United States.

In a counter attack against the Coalition, which is running hard on the ALP being soft on borders, Shorten accused the government of “telling lies about Labor” and thereby “doing the dirty work of the people smugglers.

“The Liberals are acting as spruikers for the criminal syndicates. Every time they get up and say that there will be a change in terms of border security, they are signalling criminal syndicates to try their hand again.

“They should be ashamed, they know what they do and they still do it.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sorting out what happened in UNHCR and government talks on refugees important for credibility of both sides

The government says its position has always been that none of those on Manus Island and Nauru would ever be allowed to come here.
Darren England/AAP

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The fracas between the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) and the government over whether Australia agreed to settle a handful of the Manus Island/Nauru boat people with family here goes to questions of fact and humanity.

UNHCR claims it consented to facilitate the Australia-US resettlement deal, reached late last year, “on the clear understanding that vulnerable refugees with close family ties in Australia would ultimately be allowed to settle there”.

The government says its position has always been – as it has consistently said publicly – that none of those on Manus Island and Nauru would ever be allowed to come here.

It should be possible to get to the bottom of what was said in the multiple meetings the UNHCR had with the government. Presumably each side, and certainly the Australian bureaucrats, would have taken notes. These should be produced. Or perhaps information will be dragged out eventually in that very useful inquisitorial forum, Senate estimates.

Asked whether Immigration Minister Peter Dutton had given an assurance, Volker Turk, UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for protection, told the ABC on Monday: “He didn’t give us assurances because we didn’t present cases yet. But he did agree that we would be able to present such cases.”

One can imagine how, anxious to get UNHCR involvement, Dutton and officials might have let the impression be left that cases would be considered – when they had no intention of looking favourably at any of them.

Maybe this is too Machiavellian – but the record should clarify. It is important for the credibility of both the UNHCR, which made the claim in a very tough statement, and the government that what happened be made clear.

Then there is the substantive question. We are talking about very few people – some 36 identified so far with a humanitarian claim and links to Australia, according to the UNHCR.

Whether the UNHCR or the government is right about the tenor of their conversations, surely in the cases of these people, it is not asking too much to expect Australia to take them in, regardless of the policy.

Dutton and colleagues default to the standard line, conjuring up the prospects of a fresh armada if any exceptions are ever made.

When the US deal was announced there was much tough talk from the government about strengthening the iron cordon of vessels patrolling around Australia in case there was a try-on from the people smugglers.

Does anyone seriously think that cordon isn’t up to the task of discouraging any fresh attempt if we let in three-dozen needy people with relatives here?

Remember that John Howard’s Pacific solution, which stopped the boats, saw some 705 of the 1,637 detained in Manus Island and Nauru between 2001 and 2008 resettled in Australia.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the government exaggerates the threat for political purposes.

In case this be seen as just being “soft” on border protection, let me say that I believe the policy of turning back boats has been justified. Offshore processing had its place in that policy, but it is a step far too far to say now that we couldn’t keep the border secure if a few special cases were allowed to come to Australia.

One wonders if Dutton, Malcolm Turnbull or other ministers are ever troubled in their consciences, as they enjoy their own families, about what they are doing to the lives of children on Nauru or young men on Manus Island.

It’s as if the government buys its own propaganda, which subtly or not-so-subtly demonises these people – a majority of whom are found to be refugees – essentially suggesting they are criminals, as in Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s comments on Tuesday.

“If people seek to arrive illegally, if they pay criminal smuggling networks, they will not be resettled in Australia,” she said. Bishop, of all people, knows that the story of seeking asylum is more complicated and involves the question of rights, with “unauthorised” arrivals being the appropriate term.

The row with the UNHCR sits uncomfortably with Australia’s campaign to win membership of the UN Human Rights Council, for which the vote is in October. The council’s remit is “the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe”. But Bishop, who has been advocating for Australia’s candidature as she travels the world, on Tuesday was confident of success.

Leaving aside the contretemps with the UNHCR, some eight months after the announcement of the US deal none of the people from Manus Island or Nauru has moved to America.

We know that Donald Trump hates the Obama-era deal – under which the Americans agreed to take up to 1,250 refugees – though he has said he will honour it.

We know that the Americans are doing their own “extreme vetting” of the refugees.

We know that the US has already filled its refugee quota for the year ending September, so these people are pushed into the following quota, which starts October.

What we don’t know is how hard the Turnbull government is working to persuade the US administration to meet the agreement as soon as possible.

Turnbull makes much of he and Trump both being businessmen. Well, this can be thought of as a contract, and it is time the contract’s terms were met.

We have a special relationship with the US and that should be called upon. The people should be gone by Christmas, at the latest.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

UNHCR accuses government of breaching undertaking over refugee cases

Filippo Grandi urged an immediate end to Australia’s offshore processing of refugees.
Martial Trezzini/EPA

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, has accused Australia of breaking its word by refusing to allow refugees on Manus Island and Nauru with family in Australia to settle here – a claim denied by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

In a strongly worded statement on Monday, Grandi said that last November the UNHCR “exceptionally” had agreed to help with the relocation of refugees to the US, when the Turnbull government struck a deal with the outgoing Obama administration.

“We agreed to do so on the clear understanding that vulnerable refugees with close family ties in Australia would ultimately be allowed to settle there,” Grandi said.

But “UNHCR has recently been informed by Australia that it refuses to accept even these refugees, and that they, along with the others on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, have been informed that their only option is to remain where they are or to be transferred to Cambodia or the United States,” Grandi said.

This meant some people with serious medical conditions or who had had traumatic experiences such as sexual violence could not receive the support of close family members who are living in Australia, he said.

“To avoid prolonging their ordeal, UNHCR has no other choice but to endorse the relocation of all refugees on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to the United States, even those with close family members in Australia.”

A spokesperson for Dutton responded to Grandi’s statement by saying the government’s position “has been clear and consistent” – people transferred to regional processing centres “will never settle in Australia”.

On the ABC’s 7.30, Volker Turk, the UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for protection, elaborated on the claim.

He said the UNHCR went into its facilitation role “after long discussions with Australian government officials”.

“We had a lot of meetings with the government, including myself with the minister of immigration in November,” he said.

“There was no doubt in our mind – and this is what we put forward to the minister at the time – that we would present to him cases that are compelling humanitarian, with close family links to Australia. We were hoping that, indeed, Australia would consider them favourably within the discretion that the minister has at his disposal.”

Pressed on whether Dutton gave any assurance that he would actually allow those people to resettle in Australia, Turk said: “He didn’t give us assurances because we didn’t present cases yet. But he did agree that we would be able to present such cases.”

“Of course we went into this agreement on the understanding that, indeed, Australia would be part of the solution for a handful of compelling humanitarian cases with strong family links in Australia.”

Only 36 people had so far been identified with such links, he said.

On the basis of the understanding that it had the UNHCR “presented these compelling cases”, Turk said.

Grandi said these vulnerable people who had already had four years in “punishing conditions” should be reunited with their families in Australia. This would be the “humane and reasonable” course.

“The Australian government’s decision to deny them this possibility is contrary to the fundamental principles of family unity and refugee protection, and to common decency,” he said.

Grandi said Australia’s offshore processing policy “has caused extensive, avoidable suffering for far too long”.

“Four years on, more than 2,000 people are still languishing in unacceptable circumstances. Families have been separated and many have suffered physical and psychological harm,” he said.

The UNHCR has referred more than 1,000 refugees to the US over the past eight months. A further 500 people are waiting for the outcome of their refugee claims, being processed by authorities in PNG and Nauru. The American deal provided for the US to take up to 1,250.

US President Donald Trump made it clear in his much-publicised phone conversation with Malcolm Turnbull that he hated the deal, though he has said he will honour it.

But so far no-one has been settled. The US, which is doing its own assessments, has been slow, and now America has filled its much-reduced refugee program for the year ending September. This has stalled any prospect of departures until the new year starts in October.

Meanwhile the Manus centre is due to close on October 31, and authorities there are trying to push people out of it.

Asked on Sky on Sunday whether there was any circumstance under which the government would allow some people to come to Australia, Dutton said: “People will not be coming to Australia … the government has said it consistently”.

He said this consistent position had been part of the reason for the success in stopping the boats. “We’ve taken the people-smuggling model away from the people smugglers. People don’t believe that they can get to Australia by paying their money and if that fails then we will see a recommencement of boats.”

Pointing to the earlier 1,200 drownings at sea, Dutton said that under the Coalition’s “Operation Sovereign Borders we’ve not seen a single death at sea”.

Grandi said the UNHCR fully endorsed the need to save lives and prevent exploitation by people smugglers.

“But the practice of offshore processing has had a hugely detrimental impact. There is a fundamental contradiction in saving people at sea, only to mistreat and neglect them on land.”

He urged an immediate end to Australia’s offshore processing and for it to offer solutions to its victims “for whom it retains full responsibility”.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie tweeted:

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Labor called on the government to release the details of the US-Australia resettlement agreement, including any side deal made with the UNHCR.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/4arpi-6d25f9?from=site&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=0

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Anti-Christian Sentiment Marks Journey for Bhutan’s Exiles

Forced from Buddhist homeland, dangers arise in Hindu-majority Nepal.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, February 23 (CDN) — Thrust from their homes in Bhutan after Buddhist rulers embarked on an ethnic and religious purge, Christian refugees in Nepal face hostilities from Hindus and others.

In Sunsari district in southeastern Nepal, a country that is more than 80 percent Hindu, residents from the uneducated segments of society are especially apt to attack Christians, said Purna Kumal, district coordinator for Awana Clubs International, which runs 41 clubs in refugee camps to educate girls about the Bible.

“In Itahari, Christians face serious trouble during burials,” Kumal told Compass. “Last month, a burial party was attacked by locals who dug up the grave and desecrated it.”

Earlier this month, he added, a family in the area expelled one of its members from their home because he became a Christian.

Bhutan began expelling almost one-eighth of its citizens for being of Nepali origin or practicing faiths other than Buddhism in the 1980s. The purge lasted into the 1990s.

“Christians, like Hindus and others, were told to leave either their faith or the country,” said Gopi Chandra Silwal, who pastors a tiny church for Bhutanese refugees in a refugee camp in Sanischare, a small village in eastern Nepal’s Morang district. “Many chose to leave their homeland.”

Persecution in Bhutan led to the spread of Christianity in refugee camps in Nepal. Though exact figures are not available, refugee Simon Gazmer estimates there are about 7,000-8,000 Christians in the camps – out of a total refugee population of about 85,000 – with many others having left for other countries. There are 18 churches of various faiths in the camps, he said.

“Faith-healing was an important factor in the spread of Christianity in the camps,” said Gazmer, who belongs to Believers’ Church and is awaiting his turn to follow five members of his family to Queensland, Australia. “A second reason is the high density in the camps.”

Each refugee family lives in a single-room hut, with one outdoor toilet for every two families. The Nepalese government forbids them to work for fear it will create unemployment for local residents.

Life was even harder for them before 2006, when Nepal was a Hindu kingdom where conversions were a punishable offence.

“When I began preaching in 2000, I had to do it secretly,” said Pastor Silwal of Morang district. “We could meet only surreptitiously in small groups. I used my hut as a make-shift church while many other groups were forced to rent out rooms outside the camp.”

A fact-finding mission in 2004 by Brussels-based Human Rights Without Frontiers found that police pulled down a church structure built by Pentecostal Christians in the Beldangi camp by orders of Nepal’s home ministry. The rights group also reported that Hindu refugees ostracized the Christians, who had proceeded to rent a room outside the camp to meet three times a week for worship services and Bible study.

When the Jesus Loves Gospel Ministries (JLGM) organization sent officials from India to the Pathri camp in Morang in 2006, they found that local residents resentful of the refugees had taken note of a baptism service at a pond in a nearby jungle.

“In August, we were planning another baptism program,” JLGM director Robert Singh reported. “But the villagers put deadly poisonous chemicals in the water … Some of the young people went to take a bath ahead of our next baptism program. They found some fish floating on the water and, being very hungry – the refugees only get a very small ration, barely enough to survive on – they took some of the fish and ate them. Three of them died instantly.”

Singh also stated that poisoned sweets were left on the premises of the refugee school in the camp. They were discovered in time to avert another tragedy.

Life for Christian refugees improved after Nepal saw a pro-democracy movement in 2006 that caused the army-backed government of Hindu king Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah to collapse. The king was forced to reinstate parliament, and lawmakers sought to curb his powers by declaring Nepal a secular state.

Though Christian refugees are now allowed to run churches openly in the camps, ill will toward them has yet to end. When Pastor Silwal asked camp authorities to allow him to open a church in 2006, Hindu neighbors protested, saying it would cause disturbances. Camp authorities allowed him to open a tiny church in a separate room on the condition that its activities would not disturb neighbors.

Earlier in his life in Bhutan, said the 40-year-old Pastor Silwal, he had been a stern Hindu who rebuked his two sisters mercilessly for becoming Christians. He forbade them to visit their church, which gathered in secret due to the ban on non-Buddhist religions in place at the time. They were also forbidden to bring the Bible inside their house in Geylegphug, a district in southern Bhutan close to the Indian border.

“I became a believer in 1988 after a near-death experience,” Pastor Silwal told Compass. “I contracted malaria and was on the verge of death since no one could diagnose it. All the priests and shamans consulted by my Hindu family failed to cure me. One day, when I thought I was going to die I had a vision.”

The pastor said he saw a white-robed figure holding a Bible in one hand and beckoning to him with the other. “Have faith in me,” the figure told him. “I will cure you.”

When he woke from his trance, Silwal asked his sisters to fetch him a copy of the Bible. They were alarmed at first, thinking he was going to beat them. But at his insistence, they nervously fetched the book from the thatched roof of the cow shed where they had kept it hidden. Pastor Silwal said he tried to read the Bible but was blinded by his fever and lost consciousness.

When he awoke, to his amazement and joy, the fever that had racked him for nearly five months was gone.

Pastor Silwal lost his home in 1990 to the ethnic and religious purge that forced him to flee along with thousands of others. It wasn’t until 1998, he said, that he and his family formally converted to Christianity after seven years of grueling hardship in the refugee camp, where he saw “people dying like flies due to illness, lack of food and the cold.”

“My little son too fell ill and I thought he would die,” Silwal said. “But he was cured; we decided to embrace Christianity formally.”

Homeless

In 2001, Bhutan4Christ reported the number of Bhutanese Christians to be around 19,000, with the bulk of them – more than 10,500 – living in Nepal.

When persecution by the Bhutanese government began, frightened families raced towards towns in India across the border. Alarmed by the influx of Bhutanese refugees, Indian security forces packed them into trucks and dumped them in southern Nepal.

Later, when the homesick refugees tried to return home, Indian security forces blocked the way. There were several rounds of scuffles, resulting in police killing at least three refugees.

Simon Gazmer was seven when his family landed at the bank of the Mai river in Jhapa district in southeastern Nepal. Now 24, he still remembers the desolation that reigned in the barren land, where mists and chilly winds rose from the river, affecting the morale and health of the refugees. They lived in bamboo shacks with thin plastic sheets serving as roofs; they had little food or medicine.

“My uncle Padam Bahadur had tuberculosis, and we thought he would die,” said Gazmer, who lives in Beldangi II, the largest of seven refugee camps. “His recovery made us realize the grace of God, and our family became Christians.”

The plight of the refugees improved after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stepped in, receiving permission from the government of Nepal to run the refugee camps. According to the UNHCR, there were 111,631 registered refugees in seven camps run in the two districts of Jhapa and Morang.

Though Nepal held 15 rounds of bilateral talks with Bhutan for the repatriation of the refugees, the Buddhist government dragged its feet, eventually breaking off talks. Meantime, international donors assisting the refugee camps began to grow weary, resulting in the slashing of aid and food. Finally, seven western governments – Canada, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the Netherlands – persuaded Nepal to allow the refugees to resettle in third countries.

The exodus of the refugees started in 2007. Today, according to the UNHCR, more than 26,000 have left for other countries, mostly the United States. A substantial number of the nearly 85,000 people left in the camps are ready to follow suit.

Although they now have a new life to look forward to, many of Bhutan’s Christian refugees are saddened by the knowledge that their homeland still remains barred to them. So some are looking at the next best thing: a return to Nepal, now that it is secular, where they will feel more at home than in the West.

“I don’t have grand dreams,” said Pastor Silwal. “In Australia I want to enroll in a Bible college and become a qualified preacher. Then I want to return to Nepal to spread the word of God.”  

Report from Compass Direct News 

TURKEY: IRANIAN REFUGEE BEATEN FOR HIS FAITH

Convert to Christianity loses another job as co-workers learn he’s not Muslim.

ISTANBUL, June 15 (Compass Direct News) – Since Iranian native Nasser Ghorbani fled to Turkey seven years ago, he has been unable to keep a job for more than a year – eventually his co-workers would ask why he didn’t come to the mosque on Fridays, and one way or another they’d learn that he was a convert to Christianity.

Soon thereafter he would be gone.

Never had anyone gotten violent with him, however, until three weeks ago, when someone at his workplace in Istanbul hit him on the temple so hard he knocked him out. When he came back to his senses, Ghorbani was covered in dirt, and his left eye was swollen shut. It hurt to breathe.

His whole body was in pain. He had no idea what had happened.

“I’ve always had problems at work in Turkey because I’m a Christian, but never anything like this,” Ghorbani told Compass.

A carpenter by trade, Ghorbani started working at an Istanbul furniture maker in November 2008. From the beginning, he said, the Turks he worked with noticed that he didn’t go to the mosque on Friday. Nor did he behave like everyone else.

“If someone swore, I would say, ‘Don’t swear,’ or if someone lied, I said, ‘That’s not honest,’” he said. “You know Turks are very curious, and they try to understand everything.”

Although he tried to conceal his faith from his co-workers, inevitably it became obvious.

Soon after he started his new job, Ghorbani and his family found a new apartment. On the planned move-in day, New Year’s Day, his boss sent the company truck along with a truck driver to help; members of the Christian group that often meets in his home also came.

“When the [truck driver] saw all these people at our house, he was surprised,” said Ghorbani’s wife, Leila, explaining that he seemed especially surprised to find foreigners among the group. “It was big news back at the factory.”

Ghorbani said that in the following months the questions persisted, as well as pressure to attend the mosque. He avoided these as best as he could, but he admitted that two mistakes confirmed their suspicions. Someone from work learned that he had a broken personal computer for sale and bought it, only to find Christian documents and photos on the hard drive. Secondly, a mutual friend later admitted to a co-worker that he went to the same church as Ghorbani.

“The attitude in the entire factory changed toward me,” said Ghorbani, chuckling. “It was like they had agreed to marginalize me. Even our cook started only serving me potatoes, even though she had cooked meat as well. I didn’t say anything.”

In May the truck driver who had helped the Ghorbanis move finally confronted him.

“Your country is a Muslim country,” he told him, “and you may have become a Christian, but you are coming to Friday prayers today.”

On May 22 during lunch, his co-workers told him they were taking him to the mosque that day. “You are going to do your prayers,” one said.

Ghorbani brushed it off and, to appease them, said he would come after lunch. But as they were about to leave for the mosque, he asked them why they only pray once a week – and told them that as a Christian he couldn’t accept it and wouldn’t join them.

After the day’s last delivery and pick-up, the truck driver returned to work. As everyone was getting ready to leave, from the corner of his eye Ghorbani saw the truck driver walking up to him, and felt the blow of his fist on his temple. When he regained consciousness, some co-workers were washing his face in the bathroom.

They told him a little about how he was beaten, put him in a cab with one of their colleagues and sent him home. That evening, his fellowship group was meeting at his home. They had just sat down for dinner when Ghorbani arrived later than usual.

“He walked in, and he was limping because his right side hurt,” said an Iranian friend who was at the meeting. “There was dirt all over his clothes, and there was blood in his left eye. When I saw him I got scared. I thought that maybe a car had hit him.”

Wanting to avoid a hospital visit and questions from police, Ghorbani went to a private doctor a few days later. The doctor instructed him to stay home for three weeks to recover from the injuries: badly bruised ribs, shoulder, shins and eye, and internal stomach bleeding.

When he took the medical report to his workplace the following day, co-workers told him that his boss had fired the truck driver, and that even though management was very happy with his work, it would be safer for him to look for employment elsewhere. They said the truck driver blamed Ghorbani for losing his job and had threatened to kill him if he ever saw him.

“I have a family and home and nothing to lose,” the truck driver said, according to co-workers. “If I kill him, the worst thing that could happen to me is that I do some jail time.”

Ghorbani’s friend said that even if other Iranian converts to Christianity don’t suffer violence as Nasser has, life for them is full of pressure and uncertainty at work.

“Maybe for Christians by birth there are no pressures or problems, but people like us who want to [leave Islam to] follow Jesus are fired,” said the friend.

He explained that following their faith means living righteously and not stealing or cheating their bosses out of time and wages.

“That’s when the marginalization starts, when you resist doing wrong,” he said. “But if you live the way they do, lying and stealing, they don’t notice you’re a Christian.”

The Iranian friend said that even before he converted to Christianity in Turkey, his colleagues would pressure him to come to the mosque for Friday prayers because he was a foreigner.

“After becoming a Christian, the pressure gets worse,” he said. “The way they look at you changes … and, honestly, they try to convince you, [saying] that you haven’t researched your decision well enough.”

Now running his business out of his own home, the friend said no one can disrupt his work because of his faith, but he is a rarity among Iranian refugees in Turkey.

Ghorbani’s wife said the New Testament is clear on how to respond to attacks.

“The Bible says don’t be surprised when things happen against you, but love more, because you suffer for Christ,” she said.

Hope for a Future

The Ghorbanis said they are thankful for their time in Turkey, though their future is unclear.

The family first fled to Turkey in 2002 after realizing that their families were becoming aware of Nasser’s newfound faith. Ghorbani had worked in the Iranian Armed Forces for 10 years before he was fired in 1995 because, as a secular Muslim, he refused to attend Quran classes, which were necessary for keeping his job or being promoted.

For the following eight years, the government kept close tabs on the couple, questioning them every six months. Ghorbani could not travel outside of Iran during this period.

In 2001 he became a Christian under the influence of a customer who ordered furniture from his shop. As soon as Ghorbani’s passport was issued, he fled to Turkey; his family followed a few months later. Soon his family also espoused Christianity after his wife had a dream of Jesus saving her from sinking sand.

“We have learned the truth, and it has set us free,” Leila Ghorbani said.

The family is in the process of applying to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to re-open their case; their first application was denied three years ago.

According to the UNHCR’s most recent Global Report, in Turkey there were 2,100 Iranian refugees and 2,300 asylum-seekers from Iran in 2008. Although there is no data on how many Christian Iranians are living in Turkey, it is estimated that there is an Iranian house church in each of 30 “satellite cities” where the government appoints refugees and asylum seekers to live.

The Ghorbanis have three daughters, ages 20, 17 and 2. Ghorbani said he and his family would be in danger if they were returned to Iran.

“As a Christian I can’t return to Iran, or I risk losing my life,” Ghorbani said. “If they catch me, because I was a lieutenant they will directly hang me.”

Report from Compass Direct News