Indonesia is becoming a magnet for Muslim refugees (Feature)

By Christiane Oelrich Jul 3, 2009, 4:48 GMT

   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.