Syrian refugee spent a year locked at airport
Mhmad Motawa spent a year locked in an Indonesian airport, where he often spent hours screaming out for food and lost 30kg while waiting for asylum.
The Syrian-born father of two was trapped in Jakarta’s SoekarnoHatta airport from December 2019 to December 2020 after his passport was confiscated and no safe country would take him once the pandemic hit.
Until New Zealand stepped in. Sitting in the one-bedroom unit in Christchurch he settled into a month ago, Motawa shares his story for the first time with Stuff.
Motawa used to imagine walking out on to the street he could see through the window, under the rain he loves, or to feel the sun on his face.
He was often forgotten as airport staff grappled with coronavirus. The longest the 41-year-old went without food was more than 35 hours – regularly screaming ‘‘makanan’’ (food in Malay) – before someone took pity and gave him half a corn cob.
Other times he was joined in the room by up to 30 different travellers. He believes he contracted Covid-19 during his stay.
Motawa left Syria in 2009 to find work in Saudi Arabia, only returning in 2011 to marry. His wife joined him in his new country in 2013. After 10 years as a migrant worker there, law changes meant he lost his job and visa. He had to send his wife and two children back to family in Syria.
Motawa felt it would not be safe for him to return to his war-torn country as he would be forced into military service.
While travelling from Indonesia to Malaysia, he was deported and sent back to Jakarta. The airline crew held on to his passport, handing it to Indonesian immigration staff on arrival. He did not see it again for a year. They tried sending him back to Syria, he says, but , the pandemic, and war, meant there were no flights.
Guards forced him into a locked room, with black bars over the door, two bunk beds, a toilet and shower, and a couple of metres of space to move around, at terminal two of the airport for five months.
When the domestic terminal shut because of the pandemic, he was moved to international terminal three for seven months in a room with no bathroom. Eventually guards left the door unlocked so he could walk to the toilet and wash in a bucket.
Other travellers joined him, gifting internet credit and clothes to replace his ruined by the cracks in the yellow leather couch that was his bed. Others never stayed longer than a few days because their home countries stepped in to help.
The normally upbeat, smiling man’s voice trails off and his head lowers. ‘‘When you don’t have a
country, you don’t have a home.’’
He marked the days on the wall for three months, stopping when the days blurred into one.
But he took comfort in the friendly introductory words ‘‘I am Ronnie’’ from a Canadian English tutor he watched on YouTube every day. He got 92 per cent studying English during a chemistry degree in Syria 10 years before, but went from speaking none to fluent during his incarceration.
He jokes that Mehran Nasseri’s situation, which the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal was based on, ‘‘was better than mine’’ because he had free rein of Charles de Gaulle Airport during his 18 years stuck there.
Finally, the United Nations came to Motawa’s aid and Immigration New Zealand (INZ) accepted him after interviews, health and police checks.
He was handed back his passport 30 minutes before his flight left Indonesia and touched down in Auckland on December 29. After managed isolation and 20 days in Ma¯ngere’s resettlement centre, he moved to Christchurch. He studies English at Ara polytechnic with the aim to become a qualified plumber, drinks tea with his elderly neighbour, and loves how Kiwis smile and say ‘‘hi’’ when passing on the street.
According to INZ, refugees selected under New Zealand’s quota undergo strict screening, with some – 51 since October – accepted under emergency priority because of an immediate lifethreatening situation, deportation, detention or imprisonment.