Trump policy dims hope for refugees in Indonesia limbo
After getting death threats from AlShabab militants, Mohamed Dahir Saeed and his wife fled their native Somalia with plans to seek safety in Australia. They arrived in nearby Indonesia, only to be told “the sea is closed” for anyone attempting to make the perilous boat journey south. That was two years ago. Now another chance may be disappearing for Saeed and thousands of other asylum seekers who have made it to this Southeast Asian country with dreams of finding better lives elsewhere.
“The majority of people here, the US takes them,” Saeed said. “Now in US they say no Somalian, no Iraq, no Syrian, no Iran, no Sudan. ... So maybe we will go to another place. I hope,” he said, seated outside his tiny house perched above the Ciliwung River. For thousands of asylum seekers and refugees from Iraq, Somalia and other conflict-scarred countries, Indonesia is an often yearslong hiatus as they wait for the US or another country to accept them. President Donald Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim countries and suspension of the US refugee program has now made their tenuous situation even more uncertain.
Indonesia is home to nearly 14,000 men, women and children seeking resettlement in other countries, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. About 7,500 have been recognized as refugees, giving them the prized UN card that inches them closer to realizing their dreams of a better life. But last year just 610 were resettled in other countries such as the US, Canada, Germany and New Zealand. At least 2,700 of those in limbo here are from countries listed in Trump’s 90-day travel ban: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Libya.
Asylum seekers in general are affected by his 120-day suspension of the US refugee program, and by his decision to cut the number of refugees the US accepts this budget year by more than half, to 50,000. Some 3 million refugees have been resettled in the US since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. Saeed, 31, said that if he had the chance he’d tell the US president that as a Somalian he’s a “peace man.” He said he left Somalia after Al-Shabab militants fighting the government pressured him to join their group, and that one of the militants wanted Saeed’s wife for himself.
Possibility no longer exists
“Now in Somalia there is a war from AlShabab and government. So these Somalis who run from Somalia, they need peace because they need to work, they need to feed their family. They are looking for a better life.” Indonesia, a vast but poor archipelago country of more than 250 million people in Southeast Asia, might seem an unlikely refuge. Initially, many people fled there because they believed it would be a jumping-off point to reach Australia by boat. That possibility no longer exists: Since September 2013, the Australian government has turned back the often barely seaworthy vessels.
Puncak, a small West Java city nestled beneath a mountain that tempers Indonesia’s tropical heat, is a magnet for men from the Middle East seeking sex and a pleasant climate. Because of its proximity to Jakarta, where asylum seekers can be summoned for a refugee interview, and because of the low cost of living, many families from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and other nations also scrape out an existence there. —AP