War? What war? Syrian refugee told to go home
Home Affairs rejects asylum seeker’s plea
MURHAF Mahayni was forced to live in fear underground without electricity or water when his house was destroyed. He watched his loved ones perish and millions of compatriots flee.
Yet although the Syrian civil war is regarded as one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time, the Department of Home Affairs is convinced “there is nothing going on there”.
Mahayni was told to return to Syria when he applied for asylum in South Africa.
To add insult to injury, the department has labelled him a “fraud” for claiming his life was in danger after his Damascus apartment block was bombed, and described his ordeal as an “isolated incident of harm or generalised fear”.
The department told him to return to Syria within 14 days, despite an estimated 11 million Syrians — roughly half the country’s population — having fled or been displaced due to the five-year-old civil war in the Middle Eastern country.
Mahayni, 35, has spent the past two years in South Africa trying to convince the department that he cannot return home. He said the Pretoria official dealing with his case requested a month to study the Syrian situation, only to conclude there was no case for refugee status — despite the Syrian crisis being one of the world’s biggest news events.
“It just proves they don’t care,” Mahayni told the Sunday Times from the “home” he shares with his South African wife, Ann.
“Before coming here I did some research and saw that I had a right to be here [as a refugee]. My plan was that it would take one week until I could start a new life. But it has been almost two years now — a lot of pain and waste,” he said.
The Sunday Times has seen copies of Mahayni’s asylum documents, which detail the circumstances leading to him and his family fleeing to Turkey to live in a refugee facility.
They first lost their home in Damascus and then ended up living underground with no access to food, electricity or water, and lost many of their friends and family along the way.
Home affairs, in its rejection letter in July last year, said: “This information led the Refugee Status Determination Officer to conclude that there is nothing happening in your country and you are in South Africa for other reasons other than those you claimed. On the situation currently prevailing there is no real risk that you will be persecuted should you go back to your country.”
In a further twist, the department is also blocking Mahayni’s application for a spousal visa after he married his South African partner, despite a high court ruling that he has the right to do so. Home affairs is appealing against the ruling.
The couple and their Cape Town immigration lawyer, Craig Smith, are flummoxed by the department’s actions, saying it seems determined to prevent refugees arriving at all costs — no matter what their personal circumstances.
“His house was blown up in a war zone and they call it a completely isolated incident?” Smith said.
“There is absolutely no recognition of the Syrian crisis whatsoever, or no understanding of what is going on or what he has gone through. Mahayni has been victimised and labelled as fraudulent. But if he doesn’t qualify as a genuine refugee then who does?”
The couple said they were still faced with the prospect of separation even after they got married five months ago — having satisfied home affairs that their relationship was genuine.
Ann Mahayni said her husband “is a fantastic person”.
“I have never met anybody like him. He actually sort of made me look at life in a different way,” she said, adding that their romance had turned into a nightmare due to his home affairs ordeal.
“He can’t travel. He hasn’t seen his mother in four years. This is killing him.”
Smith said the Mahayni case was his most bizarre to date: “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at the state of play in Syria to say clearly there is war there, a complex war, and it is only getting worse.”
The department failed to comment.