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Afghan Refugee Sets Self on Fire, Others Sew Lips Shut As Desperation Rises

Afghan refugees stuck in Indonesia are staging protests in a bid for quicker resettlement. Some have been waiting for over a decade.
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Afghan refugees in Indonesia sewed  their lips shut on November 30 to protest their treatment. Photo courtesy of Baman Al

MEDAN, Indonesia – Ahmad Shah soaked his clothes in petrol before igniting the liquid using two cigarette lighters. His clothes burst into flames, turning him into a human fireball in front of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees building in the city of Medan – the agency that the 22-year-old Afghan refugee felt had failed him. 

As his clothes melted into his skin, Shah screamed and paced frantically before a quick thinking security guard grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and sprayed him with it.

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In pictures seen by Vice World News, Shah is seen on a hospital bed with third degree burns on his neck and arms where the flames had licked him, after the self-immolation failed to kill him.

Shah’s protest late last month, caught on video, was against the UNHCR and its alleged inability to assist refugees like himself in moving to a third country where they can be permanently resettled.

Just three days later, on December 3, Baman Ali, 33, an Afghan refugee in the city of Pekanbaru in Riau Province, also staged his own protest with three others. They took a needle and thread and, without anesthetic, stabbed at their own faces, puncturing the skin above and below their mouths. Ali, who fled Afghanistan for Indonesia in 2013 where he has been waiting for resettlement ever since, had decided to sew his lips shut to symbolically protest his inability to speak out about his plight.

It has been a particularly brutal few weeks in Indonesia for Afghan refugees stuck in the country while awaiting resettlement, some of whom have been in limbo for as long as 10 years. The recent acts of self-harm are signs of escalating desperation shared among refugees who while waiting, are not afforded study or work rights, or allowed to travel domestically.  

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Baman Ali, second from left, said he decided to sew his lips shut to symbolically protest his inability to speak out about his plight. Photo courtesy of Baman Ali

In recent weeks, across various Indonesian cities, Afghan refugees have been demonstrating from Makassar to Jakarta, holding “tent strikes” in front of International Organization of Migration and UNHCR buildings. The ongoing protests involve the refugees keeping vigil outside the offices 24 hours a day, sleeping in flimsy tents even as Indonesia’s rainy season has battered them in recent weeks. 

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Indonesia is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention or the subsequent 1967 Refugee Protocol, meaning refugees cannot resettle permanently in the country. Instead, they are allowed to stay in Indonesia on a limited basis – similar to if they were in transit at an airport and just passing through. 

As such, they are not allowed to work or go to school in Indonesia, or drive a car or motorcycle. They may not travel outside city limits and, with no source of income, must live off a monthly stipend of IDR 1,250,000 (USD 87) provided by IOM which barely covers even basic expenses like food.

The tent strikes, coupled with the self-immolation and the lip sewing, have sparked tension with Indonesian authorities. 

On December 15, refugees in Medan received a letter from UNHCR warning that their eviction from the makeshift camp was imminent. 

“While UNHCR understands the difficult situation in which many refugees in Indonesia find themselves, Indonesian law prohibits persons from loitering in public space,” the letter stated, while asking the refugees to leave the area and return to their accommodation in hotels provided by the IOM, adding that the public gathering is against COVID-19 protocols. 

“Refugees in Indonesia are obliged to respect Indonesian law and regulations,” it added. “Indonesian Police have the authority to enforce Indonesian law. Anyone who violates Indonesian law risks arrest by Indonesian Police and UNHCR will have limited ability to intervene to assist in this situation.”

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Two hours after the refugees received the notice, which many said they got through a forwarded message on WhatsApp, officials from the Public Order Agency or Satpol PP, a municipal police unit, stormed the camp, ripping down the refugees’ tents and bundling men, women and children into the backs of trucks.

“First, they took our tents. Then the Public Order Agency officials started taking us one by one and forcing us onto the trucks,” Afghan refugee Mohammad Reza, 25, told Vice World News. 

“We requested politely to stay there and told them that it was a peaceful demonstration. But they started beating and kicking us.”

The incident, which was streamed live on Facebook by those at the scene and seen by Vice World News, showed refugees and Satpol PP officials clashing with each other, as the refugees resisted being loaded onto the waiting trucks. They were later pushed and dragged along the ground by authorities. In one particularly distressing scene, a woman collapsed on the ground as her male companion was ripped away from her and pushed onto a truck. The incident ended with three Afghan refugees being taken to hospital having been injured in the melee. 

Ali told Vice World News that the action of the authorities in Medan has rattled the refugees in Pekanbaru who are now fearful that they may be next. 

“Our sit-down strike in front of the UNHCR in Pekanbaru is still going on, but we don’t know if they are coming for us as well,” he said. “If they take our tents, we are thinking what our next step will be. Most of us want to keep demonstrating. We are angry. We need attention and help.”

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For the refugees in Indonesia, returning to Afghanistan is an impossibility. 

Reza said that he escaped the country in 2013, following increasing violence against Hazara Afghans who are predominantly Shia Muslims in a Sunni Muslim majority country. While seeking refuge across the border in neighbouring Pakistan, his 12-year-old brother and his mother were killed in a bomb blast in Quetta in Balochistan Province.

“It’s just our life. The Hazara life,” he said.

According to UNHCR data, 600,000 Afghans have fled the country since January 2021, even before the recent Taliban takeover in August. There are over 2 million Afghan refugees worldwide, making them one of the world’s largest refugee populations. 

While UNHCR estimates that 5.3 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan since 2002, the new wave of violence in the country has crushed the hopes of many Hazara of ever returning. 

There are around 13,000 refugees in Indonesia from countries including Myanmar, Somalia and Afghanistan according to figures provided by UNHCR.

According to the refugees in Indonesia, the crackdown by the Taliban should mean that they now have a better chance of resettlement, as countries like Canada have pledged to increase quotas of Hazara refugees from 20,000 to 40,000 in recent months. 

The resettlement process however requires UNHCR to advocate for the refugees on their behalf with a third resettlement country – something that the refugees in Indonesia said the agency has not yet done effectively. According to UNHCR, of the 26 million refugees globally, only 1.5% will ever be resettled.

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Globally, only 20 countries offer permanent resettlement for millions of refugees. Only the most vulnerable like families with young children get resettled as refugee quotas have been slashed all over the world in recent years. 

“They just tell us to ‘wait’ and give us a lecture saying how many refugees there are. We know how many refugees there are in the world but we are losing hope,” said Reza.

In spite of the violence at the forced removal, refugees in Medan marched on Dec. 17 in pouring rain, to protest in front of the governors’ office, the provincial parliament and the UNHCR building.

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Refugees in Medan continue to protest on Dec. 17 despite a previously violent forced removal. Photo courtesy of Mohammad Reza

Reza said refugees refuse to stay silent any longer.

“Maybe they will come for us again but we don’t have anything to lose. In the last 10 years we have lost everything,” he said. 

In a statement provided to Vice World News, UNHCR said that it “understands refugees’ frustrations in Indonesia.”

“They are faced with restrictions due to lack of access to rights while at the same time resettlement countries restrict their resettlement quotas,” the statement said. 

But the UNHCR said that the tent strikes in Medan “disturbed the other tenants of the building and the local community,” by sleeping outside IOM and UNHCR’s offices. “Refugees can demonstrate peacefully in accordance with the law. All in Indonesia need to respect the law, including refugees,” it added.

It also said they “regularly” counsel and inform refugees about the resettlement program, and met with refugee representatives, vowing to continue open discussions.  

But promises of future talks may not be enough for the thousands of frustrated Afghan refugees who have spent years in limbo, and simply want a shot at a new life, in a new country.

In Pekanbaru, Baman Ali, who sewed his lips shut, said that the refugees were considering all their options in the face of a possible crackdown by the authorities, including also choosing to self-immolate.

“We don’t know what will happen in the future,” he said. “Maybe we will do that.”