Family stranded in airport for 3 months
Upheaval at home leaves eight Zimbabweans stuck in Bangkok with no end in sight
The year was filled with many tragic tales of those seeking refuge, but it took until Christmas for one of the most striking cases to emerge. For three months, a Zimbabwean family with four adults and four children has been stuck at Bangkok’s main airport, with no solution in sight.
Thai immigration authorities confirmed the family’s legal limbo after a post on social media emerged that appeared to show an airport worker handing over a gift to one of the children. (The post has been deleted.)
As authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe for almost 40 years, more than three million people fled the country to South Africa and elsewhere for economic or political reasons. The family now stuck in Bangkok says it left the country when Mugabe was still in power and watched the dramatic events unfold there from abroad in recent months.
In a move bearing all the hallmarks of a coup, Zimbabwe’s military took control of the country and of Mugabe himself in November. There had long been concerns about the health of the 93-year-old president and what would come next for the African country he has ruled since 1980. When Mugabe announced that he would resign after almost four decades as the country’s leader, crowds poured into the streets of Zimbabwe.
Despite Mugabe’s resignation, Thai immigration officials told the BBC that the family is refusing to fly back because of fear of prosecution, even though the country’s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has indicated he would welcome the return of Zimbabwean refugees.
The family first arrived in Thailand in March on tourist visas, according to authorities there. Thailand offers on-arrival visas, which makes it relatively easy for asylum seekers to enter the country for a limited period of time. However, Thailand very seldom grants asylum to refugees and offers no appropriate legal status.
So the family was forced to explore multiple other options to relocate to Europe. But because of their lack of visas, all attempts appear to have failed. Because the family initially overstayed their visas, they are now stuck in airport no man’s land.
The United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said it was working on a possible solution that would allow the family to relocate to a third country, but it did not indicate how long this process could take. Other cases of individuals stuck at international airports have taken years or even decades to resolve.
Meanwhile, Bangkok airport staff has been providing the family with food and beverages, and officials said the four adults and four children were not at risk. “They could travel to other countries that are willing to take them . . . We also offered to relocate them to our holding centre where there is child care. But they refused. They are happy to stay here,” one immigration official told the BBC. The family itself has so far not publicly commented on their stay at the Bangkok airport.
The case of Iranian citizen Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who was in diplomatic limbo at a Parisian airport for 18 years, for example, inspired the 2004 movie The Terminal.
More recently, American whistleblower Edward Snowden spent 40 days in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport while he was waiting to be granted asylum in Russia. At the time, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena compared Snowden’s airport stay to “house arrest, only not at home,” and emphasized the psychological toll of being forced to stay indoors in a legal limbo.