Nepal’s Visa Fine Indebts Urban Refugees Seeking a Fresh Start

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“We are being killed with the situation we are facing here. Every person who is living in Nepal and doesn’t have a work permit really has a ‘special need’.”

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Medium.com
By Summer Dunsmore | November 12, 2015

Four months after Nepal endured the deadliest quake in its country’s history, Aneela Tasneem received another, equally tremulous, shock: her and her family had been denied refugee status by the UNHCR in Kathmandu.

Back home in Pakistan, Aneela faced persecution her entire life as an Ahmadi Muslim. Following the passage of a 1974 constitutional amendment, Ahmadis have been barred from calling themselves Muslims or in any way “preaching or propagating” their faith in Pakistan. Considered heretics by the Sunni majority, Ahmadis face state-mandated fines, imprisonment, or even violence by other Pakistanis. Years of hate crimes and terrorism — including a bombing of two Ahmadi mosques in 2010, which claimed nearly a hundred lives — has forced many of them to leave their homeland, prompting resettlement throughout Europe, the United States, and South Asia.

After Aneela’s brother was attacked, Aneela and her family fled to Nepal in 2013 with the hopes of gaining refugee status through the UNHCR. Aneela’s life is one of constant uncertainty, and the question of her status as a refugee — combined with the surprise and the havoc caused by the April earthquake — leaves her struggling to secure some semblance of a future for her family. After the denial of her case, Aneela organized a weeklong sit-in outside the UNHCR gate in Kathmandu.

“As a community, we believe if one person has a problem, the whole community is there to support. We are also victims of the earthquake, but right now we’re here to try and get a positive response for refugee status for my family,” says Aneela.

The scene there is humbling. Small children build mud castles to pass the time, while women donning black burqas sit closely together, murmuring lightly in the dazed noon heat.

As one of the only English speakers in her community, Aneela has taken the role of leader and communicator as a flagship, working on behalf of improving the lives of all the Ahmadis who have fled to Nepal. When she is finally invited inside the UNHCR gates to re-testify, the eldest males cluster around her, quickly repeating their talking points in Urdu.

Irfan Cheema is an Ahmadi who finds intermittent work as an English tutor and translator in Kathmandu. Like Aneela, he’s been at the forefront of the fight to secure protection and assistance from the UNHCR in Nepal, as well as local efforts to rebuild after the earthquake. He is a poetic speaker — adept at allegory — and his story is one of scarcity and struggle: “With no way, we have to find a way. In the darkness we are searching. You can say we ran from the fire into the sea, where the crocodiles are waiting for us.”

He reveals that following the April earthquake, the Ahmadi community was without assistance for fifteen days. Like most Nepalis, their homes were completely destroyed. “After fifteen days, the UNHCR supported us [sic] 3,000 rupees, but that was nothing in the situation of the earthquake. For two months afterwards, there was nothing to earn. It is too difficult to make daily wages. First of all, if a Nepali is getting 600 rupees, then we are only getting 300, because we don’t have the right to work, so we have to work at the half-wage. But if you work for 300 rupees for 30 days, it is just 9,000 rupees. What is 9,000 rupees when the rent of the house is 15,000?” he asks.

With little opportunity to earn a living and no legal entitlement as citizens, the Ahmadis have repeatedly sought help from the UNHCR in matters of aid and advocacy. But in this propensity, the UN agency’s hands are tied.

“Nepal doesn’t have a national framework to look at refugees. There are the urban refugees, about five hundred in number, who’ve come from various conflict-hit areas — Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Afghanistan — but they are not recognized as refugees by the government of Nepal. They are considered illegal migrants. When they come to Nepal, they approach UNHCR, and since the UNHCR mandate is to work in the protection of refugees, we recognize them as refugees after going through various assessments. But the government still considers them illegal migrants,” says Deepesh Shrestha, an External Relations Officer for the UNHCR in Kathmandu.

Originally chartered in 1992 to help Nepal house over 100,000 asylum seekers from Bhutan, the UNHCR still runs refugee camps throughout the country to assist remaining Bhutanese refugees. However, in the case of urban refugees from nearby countries in South Asia and the Middle East, the Nepali government actively deters their migration or settlement. A strict visa fine policy of $5 a day for Pakistani asylum seekers like Aneela means her family has accrued over $58,000 in debt during the two years it’s taken to apply for refugee status.

Further — as of a public hearing held on August 4th, 2015 — the UNHCR will discontinue financial aid it once provided to the majority of Ahmadis and other urban refugees. From 2016 onward, it will only be given to those with “special needs” — a margin so narrow, it does little to help most refugees living in Kathmandu. “We are being killed with the situation we are facing here. Every person who is living in Nepal and doesn’t have a work permit really has a ‘special need’,” says Irfan.

Aashif Aaqash is a young refugee who finds work as a tutor, traveling over forty kilometers a day on public buses to attend classes. He starts early in the morning and returns late at night. He has sought help from the UNHCR in obtaining a motorcycle permit, which would allow him more freedom to move around the city; but in this pursuit, along with many others, he has been denied. “The UNHCR has told us again and again to seek jobs. I asked them, if they would not help us in these small matters, how do they expect us to manage for ourselves?” says Aashif.

At eighteen years old, Aashif was forced from Pakistan following a string of threats against his and his family’s life. After returning home from a high school exchange program in Pennsylvania, an anti-American mob threw stones at his home and called him a traitor and infidel. When Aashif’s family contacted local police, they refused to help upon realizing that Aashif was an Ahmadi. The next month, Aashif’s friend was shot dead outside of his home. Aashif’s father was later shot at while riding this motorbike, the bullets puncturing the bike’s front wheel but sparing his father’s life. Aashif reports living in fear to attend classes or go to mosque for the next year; but the final straw came when three strangers attempted to kidnap him and his cousin, who both only narrowly escaped.

In late April 2013, Aashif and his family left Pakistan and traveled to Nepal with the intention of seeking asylum through the UNHCR. After one year of processing, they were finally granted refugee status.

In recounting his story and other injustices the Ahmadis have faced, Aashif’s frustration is evident; like other Ahmadi youth, he’s been transplanted in a foreign country that provides little opportunity for his future. As older members of the community with their own families to worry about, Irfan and Aneela also question what will happen to Ahmadi youth, who have nowhere to claim as their own, no clear paths to education beyond fifteen years old, and no protection from local authorities. “If we die here, then what was the point of leaving Pakistan?” asks Aneela.

Following the weeklong sit-in outside the UNHCR gate, officials agreed to re-open Aneela’s case, citing errors they conducted during the initial interview process. From August 28th onward, they re-interviewed Aneela, her brother, and other members of her family. However, on October 2nd, Aneela learned she’d been denied her second appeal for refugee status by the UNHCR. Her family is now stuck paying their nearly $60,000 visa fine, or face imprisonment. “It’s injustice,” she says. “The government can stop this.”

Her situation casts a startling light on the politics of representation in Nepal — thus posing the future question of what to do with urban refugees who come to Kathmandu, and how to guarantee a better quality of life once they reach there.



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