SAFE AT LAST
Somali refugee rebuilds his life in Bangkok
Mohammad, a teenage refugee, barely escaped becoming a child soldier in Somalia three years ago. “They [the militants] wanted to take me and use me as a child soldier but my grandmother refused to let me join them,” the 16-year-old recalled of the incident in Mogadishu, the capital city where Mohammad, who uses an alias, was born and raised.
It was May 21, 2013, when a group of militants first came knocking at the door of his family home. The militants, whose faces were concealed by cloth, had come to recruit soldiers.
Mohammad was a few days shy of 13, but age didn’t matter to the soldiers — they only cared if he was able to wield a gun.
“It [the recruitment] only depends on your physical capacities,” he explained. “If you can carry a gun, you cannot say no [to the militants’ advances].”
Luckily, Mohammad wasn’t home when they raided his house. But his grandmother was. Left shaken by the incident, she told her grandson it was no longer safe for him to stay in Mogadishu. Militant spies were hidden everywhere, and he could still get caught.
“They [spies] could be your neighbours,” said Mohammad. “You don’t know. When they burst into people’s houses, they always conceal their faces.”
The boy was on a plane out of Somalia within a week, beginning a journey that would see the young refugee land a home for himself in Thailand.
ONE CLOSE CALL
Over the past decade, Somalia has suffered a civil war born of a power struggle between the government and various Islamic extremist groups. Many people have fled the country for safety, while thousands left behind have died.
“Ten years ago, life was OK,” Mohammad says of his childhood. He came from a middle-class family, and his grandmother made a living selling vegetables. He attended school and enjoyed playing and watching football games. “Life was basically normal there.”
But the conflict escalated over the years, with militant groups seizing parts of Mogadishu.
Despite their explosive spurts of violence, they had a discreet presence in the city.
“You couldn’t tell the difference between the militants and regular citizens. They could be your neighbours. They could fool you easily. You just never know,” said Mohammad.
The militant presence made people paranoid about their everyday habits and activities: “You could not play football. They [the militants] considered it a product of Western culture. You could not even cut your hair to resemble any Western-style haircut.
“If you got caught playing football, they would beat you. We would play in front of our house, but if someone started shouting [that the armed groups were coming], we would run away.”
If the militants told you to commit suicide or build a bomb, and asked you to detonate it, you had no choice. If you didn’t do it, they’d kill your family
MOHAMMAD, REFUGEE
Although he had encountered them before, Mohammad could never identify any members of the armed groups because their faces were always hidden.
The civil war led his parents to leave when he was five years old. Mohammad, an only child, was left in his grandmother’s care in Mogadishu, but he hasn’t heard from his parents in 10 years.
On the day militants entered his house, he was spared by luck. But it could have ended in real bloodshed.
“If the militants told you to commit suicide or build a bomb, and asked you to detonate it, you had no choice. If you didn’t do it, they would kill your family,” he says.
His grandmother wasn’t taking any chances. One week after the incident, she gave him US$1,300 and put him on a flight to Malaysia, where Somalis could enter without a visa for 30 days.
But a few weeks into his time there, he fell into a smugglers’ trap. After crossing the Malaysian border to Thailand, he lost his Somali passport, leaving him undocumented in Bangkok.
FLEE FOR SAFETY
The trip from Mogadishu to Kuala Lumpur was the first time Mohammad had travelled outside Somalia.
“A part of you freaks out about moving away from everything you know. A part of you is also kind of interested in exploring life outside of Africa,” he said.
Once he arrived in Kuala Lumpur, he checked into a hotel that cost $50 per night. It was “super expensive”, he says, but he stayed in the hotel for two nights anyway.
Later, he met a fellow Somali at a mosque who offered him his apartment to sleep in for $15 per night.
The arrangement worked for him until a few weeks later when he ran out of money. He got advice to go to Thailand as it was cheaper to live there.
Besides, the Somali community in Kuala Lumpur had been unsupportive towards him, Mohammad said. Many had already lived there for seven to eight years and had established themselves.
One of the few friends he had there gave him the address of some Somalis he knew in Bangkok. The friend had studied in Bangkok and told Mohammad they would be helpful.
In June 2013, as he prepared to leave, he caught word of a human smuggling network that could take him to Thailand. He paid a man 6,000 baht to drive him to the bus station at the Malaysian border. The man gave Mohammad a water bottle and put his bag in the luggage area for him.
After downing the drink, Mohammad slept for the whole trip. On waking up in Bangkok, he realised his bag, including his phone and passport, were missing.
So Mohammad used what remaining money he had on hand to call a taxi to bring him to the address of the Somali people, located in a central area of Bangkok.
It was morning when he reached the address of the residence of the Somali community. He was greeted there by a Somali who brought him inside to get breakfast.
SCHOOL CHALLENGE
The community offered him a place to sleep, eat and shower. They gave him a phone and took him to the United Nations office in Bangkok to file for asylum seeker status.
Mohammad stayed with the Somali community for some months. In his time there, he attended a learning centre for refugees offered by the UN, studying English, mathematics and science.
“I was not satisfied with the education,” he said. “I studied only once a week and later half a day for four days a week.”
Determined to move beyond the learning centre, Mohammad set out to find a more
challenging school environment. He is now enrolled at an international school in Bangkok. For privacy reasons, he won’t disclose the name of the school.
“I came to the school. I presented my story. I told them about my life. They said they would talk to the school board and come back to me,” he explained.
After sitting an admissions test, he became a full-time student in August 2014. Now in Grade 12, he’s thrilled to be a regular student again. The only difference between him and many of his peers is that his school is paying his tuition fees.
In his last year of high school, he’s thinking ahead about college. He would like to go but he’s not sure about how realistic this is. “I need a visa to go to college here,” he says.
But he has not given up hope. “I never thought I would get into [my international] school before. There might be a chance to go to college but the chance is very low.”
Mohammad is currently in Thailand on a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee card he received this year.
“It took quite a long time because there are many refugees coming into Thailand. They postponed my interview so many times,” he said.
To date, there are more than 2,000 refugee and asylum seeker children in Thailand, according to Kohnwilai Teppunkoonngam, Mohammad’s legal representative.
However, the UNHCR refugee card does not allow Mohammad to travel completely freely around Thailand. In February this year, he was arrested while travelling to the northern province of Chiang Rai to participate in a football
tournament with his school. “They detained me on a Sunday. I slept in the jail overnight. On Monday, they took me to the court. On Tuesday, I came back to school,” he explained.
The Chiang Rai inquiry official later decided to drop charges against him.
However, the Public Prosecutor of Chiang Rai Juvenile Case Branch continued to proceed with the prosecution against him on charges of illegal entry and stay under the Immigration Act BE 2522.
On Nov 30, the Chiang Rai Juvenile and Family Court ruled to provide Mohammad special protection for one year, reasoning that he was a minor and unlikely to pose any threat to society.
The juvenile court also ordered him to “behave well” until the next appointment on Nov 30 of next year, said Ms Kohnwilai. Mohammad must now report to the juvenile court once every three months.
Thailand is not legally bound to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and its Protocol. However, it does abide by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. The latter guarantees humanitarian assistance to children who have been displaced or have become refugees. In other words, the detention would go against the best interests of the child, said Ms Kohnwilai.
Mohammad’s case was the first instance in Thai juvenile court when a child recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR had their rights protected under Section 132 Paragraph 1 of the Juvenile and Family Court and Juvenile and Family Case Procedure Act BE 2553.
“This was a milestone case in that the Thai juvenile court ruled in favour of the best interests of the child, regardless of their migrant status,” said Ms Kohnwilai.
Hearing the decision of the court, Mohammad describes feeling overcome by joy. It had well surpassed his expectations.
He never believed he would have the freedom to live a normal life again — to go to school, meet new friends and take part in school activities. Most importantly, the court decision meant he no longer had to live in fear of being arrested under immigration law again.
KEEP THE BALL ROLLING
Spectrum met Mohammad a few days after his landmark court verdict. Although he described the experience as “one of the scariest moments” of his life, he did not show any sign of frustration. He spoke with energy and vitality.
Dressed in his football gear, his next stop after our talk was football practice. His only concerned seemed to be about making it in time for practice as he thought the interview would take a long time. He glanced at his watch a few times.
His school is currently participating in a tournament with other football teams, and they train five days a week.
Asked whether his friends knew about his story, he replied: “They know that I came from Somalia but they don’t know everything. They make jokes about it sometimes but they do not ask too much about it.” Mohammad, an attractive boy, is the only Somali student in his school.
His circle of friends is mostly from his school. “They are good people. I love them. They welcome me and give me opportunities. I respect them for that.”
An avid supporter of Arsenal and Real Madrid, he dreams of becoming a professional footballer one day. “I might be a professional player because Thailand has the facilities, coaches and everything here.”
His dreams for his future have changed since his days in Somalia. “My house in Mogadishu was near the airport. I always liked to go sit and watch the airplanes. I wanted to be a pilot,” he said. “It is not the same [here in Bangkok] — the food, the weather and environment are completely different. Yes, I do like it here but I wish I was here under different circumstances.”
Mohammad now shares a room with a fellow Somali in a small apartment in a cheap area of Bangkok. A Somali lady in the community has provided him with free food since he helped translate for her on a visit to the hospital.
Since the civil war, many Somalians have come to Thailand and spread out to various locations in Bangkok. Mohammad declined to specify where the community is most concentrated.
CLOSE CONTACT
He expressed his dream of reuniting with his parents some day. “Last time I heard [from my grandmother], my dad was going to Italy and my mom was in Yemen but going to Saudi Arabia.”
The question of his parents’ whereabouts remains uncertain but a recent encounter left him more hopeful for a reunion.
Three weeks ago, he visited the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangkok. It was his third time visiting since 2014. “I found a sort of lead during my research there, but I am still waiting for a reply,” he said.
He remains in close contact with his grandmother, who gives him financial help from time to time.
“I just called my grandmother. I tried not to ask for too much money. But I did anyway,” he said.
“I often tell her everything is going OK. I don’t always tell her when something goes wrong. When I got arrested, I told her. She started to cry. When I went to court, she was crying. I am afraid she might get a heart attack and she’ll die because of me.”
Asked what he has learned in the past three years, he says: “Not everything in life is gonna be easy. It might look easy but it is not. And yes, I have learned how to manage my money. I have tried not to ask from my grandma too often.”
Yes, I do like it here [in Thailand] but I wish I was here under different circumstances
MOHAMMAD, REFUGEE