"We don't talk loud at home, we are scared, we cringe at the sound of one opening the gate. We cannot eat, we cannot sleep, we are only weeping."
Source/Credit: Ceylon Today | Sri Lanka
By Ranga Jayasuriya | July 7, 2014
AHMADIYYA MOSQUE, NEGOMBO: Fifteen months ago, Zahira and her husband Tariq fled the Pakistani city of Lahore to escape the entrenched religious persecution there. The couple are members of the minority Ahmadiyya sect, and were getting repeated death threats and saw the members of the close- knit community gunned down or beheaded in a spiral of violence unleashed against the community. The Constitution of Pakistan itself provides grounds for the persecution of Ahmadiyya members, a moderate distinctive strain of Islam: an amendment passed in 1974 declares that Ahmadiyyas are non-Muslims.
" We lived in fear, our people are killed daily, abducted and have their throats slit and dumped by the road side. We cannot go out, we are not allowed to pray, we cannot get jobs, students are kicked out from schools when they find out we are Ahmadiyyas," says Zahira.
March, last year, the couple with their two children arrived in Sri Lanka and registered themselves with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They moved to Negombo, and led a quiet life, while their asylum application was being processed by the UN refugee agency. But on 10 June, all hell broke loose. Tariq was arrested by the immigration authorities, for no apparent reason. Officials, then, promised Zahira that he would be released in a day. Tariq, who served as an engineer for a leading soft drink giant, before fleeing Pakistan to save his dear life, is still languishing in a detention facility in Boossa along with 141 Pakistani asylum seekers. Zahira is left alone in an unknown country to tend to their two kids.
Hounded
The earlier sense of security in their new country has crumbled. Fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Zahira and Tariq are hounded in Sri Lanka.
A pervasive sense of fear and despair has enveloped the Pakistani asylum seekers in Sri Lanka.
"We don't talk loud at home, we are scared, we cringe at the sound of one opening the gate. We cannot eat, we cannot sleep, we are only weeping," laments Zahira. She is about to break into tears.
Zahira and two other women of the neighbourhood, who had their male guardians arrested, have forged a friendship. They share their woes and trauma and comfort each other.
" We spend the night together, We are scared of our lives," she says.
Things are worse for some other women. Three pregnant women and another with a three-month infant are struggling in the absence of their male members. The immigration authorities have detained the male members of the asylum seekers, leaving women in the lurch in an unknown country.
The Ahmadiyya community had taken the brunt of the government crack down on the asylum seekers, while minority Shias and Christians who also fled the persecution in Pakistan have also been locked up.
The Controller of Immigration and Emigration, Chulanada Silva is gung ho about the prospect of rounding up more asylum seekers. His disdain towards the vulnerable community becomes evident as he justifies the crackdown- with sweeping (and largely unsubstantiated) allegations.
" They are a harmful element to our country," he says. They come here on visit visa and then register with the UNHCR as asylum seekers. They should be deported.
Silva alleges that the Pakistanis are engaged in illegal activities and are taking up local jobs.
"There can be terrorist elements who misuse these channels." He says intelligence agencies should look into potential terrorist links.
The backlash against the Pakistanis took place in the wake of the allegations by the hard-line Buddhist organization Bodu Bala Sena and ultra nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya that Pakistani 'terrorist groups' have infiltrated the country. The military spokesman has since denied any presence of Islamic terrorists groups in the country. However, Silva and his ilk in the Department of Immigration are purportedly trying to give currency to the allegations of the ultra nationalist elements.
Sri Lanka is not a state party to the UN Refugee convention, however, under a bilateral agreement signed in 2005 between the Sri Lankan Government and the UN refugee agency, the government agreed to allow the registered asylum seekers to stay in the country until their asylum applications are processed and they are resettled in a third country.
The recent detention and threats of deportation are violating the 2005 agreement. However, Chulananda Silva is unapologetic and his tone smacks of contempt as he fields questions on the breach of the 2005 agreement. So what? he snaps.
"Yes, there was an agreement. But since 2012, when every time, the UNHCR issued refugees letters, we raised objections. They never acted upon on those concerns and replied to us," he says.
Now it is payback time, he seems to be saying.
According to the agreement between UNHCR and the Government of Sri Lanka, once UNHCR registers an asylum seeker, he/she signs a statement to the effect that he/she is bound by the laws of Sri Lanka while being considered for refugee status, says Dushanthi Fernando, spokesperson of the UNHCR .
" He/she is issued a temporary time-bound asylum-seeker certificate valid for two weeks. Both the signed statement and the temporary asylum certificates along with additional information are then shared with the GoSL. Upon receipt of this information, GoSL will then notify UNHCR of any objections it has. If no objections are expressed within two weeks, UNHCR will issue an asylum-seeker certificate for a three-month period, which is renewed until the refugee status determination process is complete and the asylum-seeker's claim is either accepted or rejected," she adds.
Fernando acknowledges that the UN agency was not informed of the recent arrests before hand, nor does it have access to asylum seekers who are detained in the detention facilities of Mirihana, a Colombo suburb and Boossa, Down South.
According to Fernando, 189 people have been detained as of 3 July. 144 of them are of Pakistani origin and they are all registered with UNHCR.
International law requires the states to observe the principle of Non-Refoulement, which is also the corner stone of the asylum and refugee law. It dictates that a persecuted individual should not be handed over to his torturers. In order to effectively enforce the principle, it states that "no expulsion measure will be carried out as long as no decision has been taken on the asylum application."
However, Chulananda Silva has no qualms as he threatens to deport the asylum seekers back to Pakistan.
Mosquito infested
Only good news as of now, Sri Lanka has not yet deported any asylum seekers as of Friday, according to Fernando.
In the meanwhile, Zahira is waiting for the release of her husband. On Thursday, she visited Tariq in the Boossa detention facility on a visit arranged by the Red Cross.
"It was a tiny room, and he was separated from us by a net. Children could not touch their father, they were crying all the time during the meeting," she recalls.
Tariq has complained that he and 141 detainees kept there are living in squalor.
"He said they are locked up in a mosquito infested crowded hall and that it was very hot inside and that they do not even have a fan.
Some asylum seekers had contracted skin rashes due to poor hygiene.
"Some guards were teasing us, calling us Pakistani terrorists. We are also human beings, why are people so nasty?" Zahira laments.
The distraught community meets every day at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Negombo. It was noon and the Pakistanis and Sri Lankans were streaming into the mosque for prayers. The mosque and the local Ahmadiyya community are the reasons that most asylum seekers moved to the neighbourhood, after registering with the UNHCR.
We don't encourage people to come to Sri Lanka, says a spokesperson for the mosque. But, when they come, fleeing persecution and murder in Pakistan, we cannot send them back," he insists.
He reiterates that Ahmadiyya's are among the most peaceful among the Muslims. "We do not believe in offensive jihad. That is why our people are prosecuted worldwide by extremists, he says.
After prayers, some asylum seekers spend time in the mosque, chatting with their members. Now, they only have to share a sense of despair and insecurity.
Zahira begs for sympathy "We will be here only until our applications are processed. Then we will go to a new country, she assures. Her brother and sister have also fled Pakistan and are now refugees in the UK.
"When we leave, we will only take the good memories of this country,' she says . Now, as she is waiting for her detained husband to return, she is living in a nightmare in a country she thought would be hospitable.
(Names have been changed to protect the identity of the asylum seekers interviewed in this story)
----------------------------------
Courtesy: Aziz A.A.
Read original post here: Sri Lanka: They fled persecution to end up in misery | Fate of Ahmadiyya refugees
This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. Any comments irrelevant to the post's subject matter, containing abuses, and/or vulgar language will not be approved.