Cisarua, Indonesia - Indonesia is steadily developing into a
way-station for refugees from the Middle East waiting to migrate to a
third country.
Afghan refugee Bashir Bahtiari, 45, has been stranded here just
like his countrymen Habibullah, 29, and Ismail, 17, as well as
Duraid, 44, and Dina, 32, from Iraq.
But all of them want to leave as soon as possible. 'We would go
anywhere,' they all said.
They came to Indonesia directly or via Malaysia because these
Muslim countries are among the very few that issue entry visas to
Afghan and Iraqi nationals.
The prospect of travelling on to nearby Australia is an additional
lure, and Australia's navy has already intercepted some 15 refugee
boats this year alone, compared to only seven during the whole of
last year.
Nobody knows exactly how many of the often overloaded and rotten
boats make it through and how many sink on the high seas.
But Ismail is convinced that 'there is a 90-per-cent chance to
make it to Australia,' adding that he got this information from the
internet.
Human traffickers demand 6,000 dollars per person, according to
Ismail.
As a child he fled Afghanistan's capital Kabul with his entire
family and found shelter in a refugee camp in Pakistan, where he
learned fluent English.
'I now want to complete my higher education, then study social
science and politics,' he says.
Duraid once worked at the Ministry of Planning in Baghdad, but was
threatened, he says, and eventually saw himself confronted with the
choice of fleeing the country or dying.
He shows a long scar on his knee which he sustained during an
ambush. His wife Dina opens her mouth and shows gray upper incisors.
'They dragged me from the car and beat me up,' she says.
The couple fled Iraq in February 2008 together with their
2-year-old daughter Dana via Syria to Malaysia.
There Duraid bought South African passports on the black market.
They reached Indonesia by boat, but the immigration officers at
Jakarta airport detected their false travel documents.
They registered with the United Nations High Comission for
Refugees (UNHCR), got refugee papers, and now live in Cisarua, a
small town some 70 kilometres south of Jakarta.
The couple are not allowed to work. Instead they live on an
allowance of some 225 dollars per month given to them by United
Church Services, a non-governmental organization.
Now the family of three is waiting for a host country to invite
them for resettlement.
More than 1,200 Afghans and about 280 Iraqis are currently
registered with the UNHCR in Jakarta, but aid organizations say that
the real number of refugees is probably much higher as there are many
illegal immigrants.
'Indonesia is very generous to refugees. They don't accept them
for resettlement, but they don't turn anyone away either,' says Anita
Restu of the UNHCR.
It is this hospitality that irritates Australia, which has a
budget of just 34 million US dollars for bilateral action by
Australian and Indonesian police against human traffickers.
Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities have stepped up their patrols
along the 1,000 kilometre south coast of Java and beyond.
They nabbed Habibullah, who is currently detained in the town of
Malang in Eastern Java.
The Afghan arrived in Indonesia via Pakistan and Malaysia, but
police got suspicious when they found him wandering around 'without
good reason.'
He is now being held at Kantor Imigrasi Kelas, a kind of
internment camp run by Indonesian immigration.
Bashir Bahtiari says his life was in danger after he mocked
Taliban leader Mullah Omar in cartoons he drew.
The Taliban put a bounty on his head, he claims.
'The Taliban said that anyone who kills me will get 100,000
dollars. Even my relatives wanted to get that money,' he says.
Eventually Bashir obtained a visa, fled to Indonesia and now holds
legal refugee status.
His wife and four children made it safely to Pakistan. Bashir is
also waiting for resettlement in one of the 11 countries that accept
refugees.
Just like Ismail, Habibullah, Duraid and Dina, Bashir is waiting
patiently, in his case for 'one year and 15 days,' he says.
'Refugees are real people with real needs,' read the slogan
printed on their t-shirts when they recently attended a
UNHCR-organized activism day in Cisarua.
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