Afghans Protest Slow UN Resettlement Process in Indonesia (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Hundreds of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers living in Indonesia rallied in front of the UN refugee agency office in Jakarta and 5 other cities on Monday to urge it to speed up their resettlement.
They held large banners reading “Our families are in danger. Please act now" and "Resettle refugees and save lives” during the rally in front of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Some children of asylum seekers joined the rally and held banners in their hands.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, and the government does not allow asylum seekers to work or have access to schools or public hospitals. It is surrounded by countries that host large numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees such as Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.
About 13200 refugees and asylum seekers from different countries in Indonesia are registered with the UNHCR and about 7,500 of them are Afghan-Hazara refugees.
Images of police beating Afghan refugees at a protest in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, on January 18, 2022, have been circulating on social media, as demonstrations have been going on for months across the country, as thousands of Afghan refugees, in their majority members of the Hazara ethnic minority, demand faster resettlement in third countries. Some have been waiting for more than a decade for asylum.
A long-oppressed minority in Afghanistan, the Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims, have been coming to Indonesia for years in hopes of gaining asylum in other countries such as the United States and Australia.
The protests intensified after a Hazara man named Sayed Nader Balkhi committed suicide on January 16, 2022 in Pekanbaru. He had been waiting for resettlement for six years, unable to work or send his five children to school.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan last August, things got even tougher for Hazaras in Indonesia as they watched their already remote chance of return evaporate and feared for the safety of family members still in the country.
Now the Hazara also face discrimination in Indonesia, where they are once again a minority.
Refugees and asylum seekers have paid a heavy price for more than a decade due to the UNHCR and IOM’s negligence and silence.
More than 15 refugees suffered from depression due to lack of process and uncertain future and committed suicide, 14 of whom belonged to Hazara Afghan refugees.
According to VorIndonesia, Dozens of people, the vast majority of whom were Afghan refugees, fell ill with severe depression and physical illnesses and lost their lives under IOM watch in the absence of health services.
Given the deplorable conditions that Afghan refugees have been struggling with for more than a decade, they have been staging civil/peaceful demonstrations in Indonesia for the past four months, setting up tents and sewing their lips together. Unfortunately, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has not yet had a specific answer for the refugees, and during the several meetings they had, they only said, “We understand your situation, but the host country does not accept you, and resettlement is very limited.” “And not all refugees are going to be resettled.”
