At around 9:30 pm on July 30, Mohammad Yassin Nazari, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan who had been stranded in limbo in Indonesia for nearly a decade, attempted to take his life by cutting his wrist artery in a protest in front of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Jakarta.
When the bleeding would not stop, guards at the UN agency took a taxi to send him to the hospital, only for Yasin to return to protest minutes later. The next day, he was found dead at a train station by local police, who then shifted the body to the hospital.
Nazari, 26, was a Hazara—an ethnic group with mostly Shia Muslims who have suffered longstanding massacres, discrimination, and marginalization in Afghanistan. He was living in a detention center in Indonesia while waiting for resettlement in a third country.
“My heart was shattered,” Ezzat Ahmadi, a refugee activist residing close to Yasin’s housing area and who went to see the body at the hospital told KabulNow. “Desperation is looming. Refugees and asylum seekers are losing hope.”
Stuck in limbo for years, the mental health crisis among the over 12,000 asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesia is markedly growing.
“Since 2014, our record shows that at least 18 people have committed suicides and many more attempted to do so,” Ahmadi said, fearing that the rate of suicide could leap as the hope of resettlement has faded.
Ahmadi reported that refugees who he has spoken with experience poor physical and mental health. “They are depressed in one way or another and many are taking medication,” he said.
Another refugee, who has been living in Indonesia for over seven years, said, “We feel exhausted with many suffering from mental and physical illnesses.”
Most of the asylum seekers and refugees trapped in Indonesia come from Afghanistan, fleeing war, persecution, and economic crisis. And nearly all of them, like Nazari and Ahmadi, are ethnic Hazaras. Others left countries like conflict-ridden Somalia, Myanmar, Sudan and Iran.
For Hazara refugees, many of whom have traveled first to India and Malaysia before boarding a boat to Indonesia en route to Australia, the country is seen as a transit place rather than a destination.
But in 2013, Australia began to turn away migrant boats trying to reach the country. And since 2010, the government in Canberra has been accepting about 400 refugees from Indonesia each year—a figure reduced to 85 in 2017-18.
Left with no durable solution, many were stranded in Indonesia, a country not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol. This means the rights of asylum seekers and those registered as refugees with the UNHCR are restricted. Under Indonesian law, those unregistered are deemed as “illegal immigrants” at risk of deportation.
Refugees, many of whom live on a small monthly allowance—$90 for an adult and $36 for a child—from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) or from relatives to pay for food and clothing, mostly live in cramped, cheap apartments, rooming houses or detention centers. The IOM also provides basic services like healthcare, accommodation, and training.
However, many refugees call IOM accommodations an “open prison”.
Juma has lived as a refugee at a temporary shelter in Tanjung Pinang in Riau Islands, in the western part of Indonesia, since he fled Afghanistan with his family several years ago. He says their livelihood and security are at stake.
“Living conditions are deplorable here,” Juma, who asked to be identified by his first name for fear of retribution, told KabulNow. “We don’t have access to work, education, and healthcare services. We are trapped in a prison.” For many like Juma, night-time curfews and restrictions also mean that refugees could face punishment or risk being sent to immigration detention centers.
Juma says he wants a normal life and a certain prospect of being resettled to a safer country where he can begin a new life with his family.
But only a small number of the thousands of refugees waiting in the country will be resettled elsewhere because of limited places available, according to the UN refugee agency. The agency says over 1,500 refugees departed from Indonesia to begin a new life in a third country in 2023—a slight improvement compared to just 375 in 2021 when the process was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding to respond to the needs of refugees stuck in Indonesia is also crumbling, UNHRC says. The agency has only received 13% of the total $13.1 million requested for 2023.
“Resettlement is not speedy … because it is not the UNHCR who decides,” Ann Maymann, a UNHCR representative in Indonesia, said. “We cannot decide that a refugee will go to this country.”
This UN agency states that it is also working to expand access to complementary pathways for eligible refugees, indicating that in the same year, more than 300 refugees have moved to third countries, such as Canada and Australia, through talent programs, private sponsorship, and family reunification programs.
UNHCR also facilitates voluntary repatriation for refugees to return to their home country if they request return. But for Juma, also an ethnic Hazara, returning to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could threaten his life and that of his family.
“I’ll not return to Afghanistan as it is not safe for me and my family to live under Taliban rule,” said Juma, who left the country after being threatened by the Taliban who is back in power after the Western-backed former government collapsed nearly three years ago. “The group’s forces have tortured and killed people of my ethnicity and faith.”
To express their dissatisfaction with the status quo and the UNHCR’s “failure” to address their problems, refugees have staged numerous protests, mainly in front of the UNHRC and IOM offices in Jakarta. In one such protest, the refugees called upon the UNHCR, refugee-supporting countries, and organizations advocating for refugee rights to pay serious attention to their predicament and facilitate their resettlement.
“If the UNHCR and human rights organizations genuinely stand for refugee rights, they should take real action on our behalf,” a group of protestors in Indonesia’s Makassar who wore shrouds as a symbol of their plight said in a statement on the World Refugee Day last year. “Nowhere else have refugees been left waiting for 12 years.”
In a last-ditch effort to make their voices heard internationally, Hazara activists from around the globe earlier this year joined a social media campaign calling for an #End12YearsinLimbo_Indonesia for thousands of refugees stuck in Indonesia.
