Nansen Refugee Award
Jul 19th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
9 July 2010 – British photojournalist Alixandra Fazzina has been named the winner of the Nansen Refugee Award given annually since 1954 by Geneva-based UNHRC (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) to an individual “for outstanding work on behalf of refugees.”
Fazzina began her photojournalism career following the British Army in Bosnia for two years, after which she began to record the lives of refugees.
She spent two years in Somalia chronicling the exodus of migrants and refugees from Somalia to the Arabian Peninsula and the smuggling business in the Gulf of Aden. The book which came out of this work will be published in September 2010, A Million Shillings, Escape from Somalia.
UNHCR, on announcing the award, noted that: Over the last ten years Alixandra Fazzina has tirelessly documented the plight of the uprooted through distinctive and moving photo reportages. Alixandra Fazzina’s work has taken her to Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia to cover
Reflection on our panel discussion
Jul 13th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
Saturday 26 June, 2010 – Vision First has marked the 2010 United Nations International Day for the Support of Victims of Torture with a panel discussion on the Protection of the Rights of Torture Victims in Asia and Hong Kong.
In partnership with Asian Human Rights Commission, hosted by the University of Hong Kong and streamed live on the internet by the Professional Commons via Community TV, the five panelists delivered their perspectives on human rights violations of citizens, asylum seekers and refugees in Asia.
Panelists were Mr Mark Daly – Human Rights Lawyer at Barnes and Daly Solicitors, Mr Brian Barbour – Chief Executive of Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre (HKRAC), Mr Richard Tsoi – Community Organiser, Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), Mr Bijo Francis – Program Officer (India), Asian Human Rights Commission and Mr Baseer Naweed – Program Officer (Pakistan), Asian Human Rights Commission.
The panel outlined Hong Kong’s mechanisms for handling torture and asylum
claims, detention facilities and the treatment of refugees by the authorities, and Hong Kong’s political position and responsibilities having not signed the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention.
The panel also outlined the situation in India and Pakistan where harsh and unlawful police and military forces routinely torture citizens to extract information and enact revenge against opponents.
Video interviews and documentaries of torture survivors illustrated the severity of the inhumane treatment of vulnerable citizens across Asia. Cases from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Pakistan highlighted the crucial need to reform political systems to protect the human rights of all.
Q&A sessions engaged the panel in discussions from various perspectives including asylum seekers, international lawyers, law students and Hong Kong NGOs. A tragic personal story of torture reminded all those present with the reality of the situation, reminding us all of the gravity of human suffering. As hard as it is to speak about, and as hard as it is to hear, the sharing of personal experiences from Mr Naweed, as well as from those interviewed on film, stirs in listeners the motivation and sense of urgency to do whatever we can to help stop the use of torture.
Vision First is currently planning similar forums to promote the welfare and protection of rights for asylum seekers, refugees and torture claimants in Hong Kong.
Still powerless to move forward
Jun 27th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
One of my first memories, when I arrived in Hong Kong a few years ago, is about a 65 year old man from South-East Asian who, on his second day here, approached me seeking help on his next steps. It often happens that people arriving in Hong Kong do not know much about asylum or protection and even less about this city. He said: ‘I was managing a hotel back in my country. I was the Director. I used to welcome important people, many foreigners, even prime ministers and heads of state in official visit. And now… now I am here seeking asylum.’ Tears flowed down his face and suddenly he stopped talking. With pride, as if connecting to a past that wasn’t his any longer, he gave me his business card. I took it and, with uneasy embarrassment, I exchanged it for mine. Fate is sometimes cruel: a person spends a lifetime building a career, having a family, sacrificing everything and then, quite suddenly, unexpected and unacceptable disaster strikes. The ensuing trauma is deep and unexplainable. This old man, a little bent forward, tearful eyes glistening on his weathered dark skin, gave me a deep sense of tenderness. A few months later he decided to gamble with his life by moving back to his country. Refugee life here was simply too harsh for him to bear. He was one of the first refugees I met in Hong Kong.
Having spent several years away, my return to Hong Kong wasn’t welcomed by many improvements. Sure, new skyscrapers were built, subway lines increased in number and convenience, but refugees are still here, still unable to accept their past and still powerless to move forward. I recall that old man and wonder whether he is still alive, whether his courageous return home enabled him to reclaim that fundamental role of every father: to love and support wife and children. It just makes you wonder. Refugees escape for the most diverse reasons, but when that occurs, what happens to their families? They simply shatter! Some people succeed to arrive with their closest family members, but most others do not. Increasingly restrictive immigration control measures, enforced by countries in the globalized Northern hemisphere, have resulted in extremely harsh and expensive journeys for refugees in search of safety. Their movement is characterized by countless obstacles, risks, uncertainty and even death. Fathers leave their loved ones behind thinking it isn’t safe to travel together, however they always hope to reunite their family when their application for asylum is processed and are granted the right to family reunion. In Hong Kong, this is simply an illusion.
Once they enter the asylum system, very few people can do anything about their future and in fact, they lose the right to travel. Their life becomes the continuous duplication of the same tedious day, repeated over and over again for years – hopelessly. Waiting is the only activity for thousands of men, women and children who will probably never be able to see their families again. They are now inertly waiting for someone to decide their refugee status, for someone to provide for their daily needs, for someone to fix their broken lives, which this very asylum system conspired to tear apart.
[An anonymous friend]
Trapped in a well
Jun 20th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
What’s the difference between an illegal immigrant and a genuine refugee?
An illegal immigrant said: “It’s difficult to live at home. I must look for better opportunities …”
A refugee said: “It’s impossible to survive at home. I might be killed tonight …”
But how do refugees reach the breaking point? It happens when justice fails, when persecutors bring down blows, when tormentors drag them inches from death, beyond care and consequence. They prepare themselves for death, because what they were was all they had. Now family, friends and community all turned to horror. In jail there are beatings and torture. Executions are the enemy’s final tactic – effective terror in a life beyond ransom. Fear and rage, tears and despair are all there is left. They feel driven mad and wish for death as a welcome release. Terrible things happen. Everything is going to hell, they feel it in their bones. The enemy’s hands are dipped in your family’s blood. Life has lost meaning. There is no mercy, no justice, no rules – just fury and hatred. More killings and executions … you are next … but suddenly you escape!
Through self-imposed odyssey, refugees remain tied to their country, their family, their culture while struggling to adapt and move on. Hong Kong is nothing but a transit point, a temporary shelter offering no residence, no work, no durable solution. A letter they sign on release from detention reminds them of this reality. Eventually they are expelled from a facility where they got meals, shelter and medicines. They must fend for themselves from the No. 52X bus-stop, without coins for the fair. They walk to Kowloon … hoping to encounter a Good Samaritan … because courage brought them this far. It’s a hard life. Time moves in jerks. Life is swallowed by fear, depression and humiliation. They came because they needed to escape, they had no choice. Nobody chooses to be a refuge to better their fortune. They carry the double burden of loss and hopelessness, of a life wasted away in a recurring nightmare, beyond help. They fend off grinding poverty, hunger, homelessness. On top of these there is abuse and discrimination, the public failing to distinguish illegal immigrants from refugees. Food, water, shelter all cost money. They beg for help from anyone who’ll listen. Crime is absent despite their dreadful circumstances. They walk up to restaurants and ask for bread … they ask random people for help … they eat when they get a break, they shower when they get lucky. They pray for meal, a park bench, an empty pew, a caring stranger. How much tougher it is if you are still a youth! The bane of humanity is indeed ignorance and want.
Refugees are a shadow of the life they used to be. In our city they enjoy freedom of movement without the means to survive; the right to walk and breath, but not a chance to cook and wash. It’s as if the walls of prison expanded to encompass the city; yet walls they remain and their life is doomed to poverty, with no hope beyond today. Our authorities condemn them to an existence with few resources – prohibiting work paid or unpaid, including volunteering – to live like frogs trapped in a well, from where they can see a patch of sky they’ll never reach. We can only appreciate their plight in a friend-to-friend conversation, with trust and empathy. There are only two certainties: shame and suffering. There is nobody else for them, no family, no community. They are forced out on the street like beggars. Violence, insecurity, despair, life on the edge, lost in gloom and bitterness, doing anything to survive, even sell their body … These are our invisible citizens, wondering faces lost in well-known streets, including children deprived of a future by accident of birth. Their wounds are old and nothing can be done to prevent them … however, the scarring can be healed and that’s our social responsibility.
UNHCR refugee statistics: full 2010 data
Jun 16th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
The UN’s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) releases its annual global report, Global Trends, today – which this year shows the highest numbers of displaced people worldwide since the 1990s. This means there are now 43.3m people forcibly displaced around the world – including: 27.1m internally displaced people (IDP) and 15.6m refugees.
Those refugee numbers have dropped a negligible amount, but a 4% rise in people displaced within their own country and a huge fall in returning refugees – to the lowest level in 20 years – means overall numbers are up.
Simply put, as conflicts rumble on, those who fled the initial fighting cannot safely return until the gunfire falls silent.
The key drivers of these trends are continuing conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and the Congo, Democratic Republic of and as-yet-unresolved situations in places such as Iraq and Sudan. Colombia‘s 3.3 million internally-displaced persons is the highest in the world, with African nations accounting for 40% of the world’s internally-displacedpopulation.
Most interesting, perhaps, is the rubbishing of so-called conventional wisdom with regards to refugee relocation. Forget our over-burdened immigration system; four out of every five refugees are housed in the developing world, with Europe only accounting for the resettlement of 16% of the global population.
So who takes the most refugees? Pakistan leads the way, with 1.7 million, and Iran and Syria, at just over 1 million each, make up the podium. The US and the UK? They barely make the Top 10.
The amount of data in this report is staggering, and there are more convention-shattering facts to be found inside, including:
• Breakdown of where refugees from each country go to
• Ratio of refugees per 1,000 population
• Repatriations
• Every UNHCR refugee camp and settlement listed, with data
• Demographic breakdown
If you want to map it – click the last tab. This has both UNHCR and ISO country codes to help you. How we mapped the data is above. What can you do with the numbers?
The sun never sets on World Refugee Day
Jun 15th, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
Click here to read more:www.unhcr.org/4c16241e6.html
A blog from our client – Gharib
May 21st, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
I come from a country where 5% of the population is so powerful even unarmed they can slap a policeman who’ll run away scared clutching an AK47. Instead 80% of people live close to the ground in wretched poverty and in the middle is an middle class, close to power yet always a target of the wealthy who will kill to possess the little they don’t own. In my case it was the land my grandpa left me – a blessing which became a curse. I planned to develop it when I finished university, but a militia boss close to presidential power had the same desire. These guys are ruthless, evil, won’t stop at anything: I was arrested twice and beaten so badly I thought I would die. In the cells next-door it was worse, the screaming unspeakable, shots were fired and bodies dragged out … I got lucky. Weeks later I was released in another country, no passport, no money, but free to run away. How powerful these people are if they can arrest without charge, torture at will and dump opponents across borders?
Before I came to HK I didn’t know you could be so hungry you don’t know what to do. After being released from Immigration I spent the toughest two months of my life, homeless, hungry and helpless, yet my mother said: “That place is heaven. Don’t come home. If you come back they will kill you!” I must be honest, I ate from dumpsters every day: rice and sandwich bits outside 7/11, fruits and chapatti outside Wellcome. Hong Kong people are rich, they throw so much stuff away. I cried as I wasn’t sure I would get a meal, I had no money for my phone and I didn’t know where to wash. Daytime I slept in Kowloon Park or under the arches of the Cultural Centre. It’s too scary to sleep in the streets at night; in our country somebody might slit your throat to take your clothes. Better to sleep in the morning: when the park opened I lay on a bench by the two cannons, wore two jackets to keep warm and slept a few hours before the guards told me to sit up. The police never came, nobody disturbed me, I clutched my backpack and hoped dreams would be better than the nightmare I lived. Once dark I left the park as I didn’t feel safe; I went to a guesthouse in Mirador Mansions, where the African boss didn’t mind me sitting in the reception watching TV with the tourists.
Eventually the owner allowed me to shower and every three days, seeing I was hungry, a guest had pity and offered his leftovers – nobody bought me a meal. Again I could catch some sleep but when the place closed I had to move out; I spent half hour pacing each floor, avoided the 7/11 as there is fighting at night. I sat by the mosque and then little by little walked to Star Ferry and along the waterfront to Hung Hom, looking at the water, imagining I would drown quickly carrying my bag. Just keep walking, if you sit the ground becomes too hard and time stops flowing. Just keep moving, you suffer less, looking at stuff time passes faster and when you’re tired you sleep better daytime. “Hell Time” is 2 till 5am when minutes feel like hours! It’s weird: clocks are in slow-motion, the darkness so thick that dawn cannot pierce it. But once daylight breaks, the city comes to life, your heart rejoices seeing people around as they make you feel normal again. I walked up Chatham road to the Rosary Church for mass every single day at 6am. It felt good to pray, I loved the music and the singing as it gave me hope and I could sleep at the back afterwards. When a boy called me “Rastaman” as I didn’t have a razor to cut my hair and beard, I took out a photo from a wedding at home and couldn’t believe what a shocking change I’d made.
My first break came walking around Chung King Mansion at lunchtime. I heard guitars and singing inside, I entered an open door and the most amazing thing happened – I was offered a hot meal, the first in two months! Expecting they would ask me for money, I said NO repeatedly, but Pastor Sam insisted and I realized it really was for me. After eating out of dumpsters for months, that was a miracle. It was unreal: the first hot meal since I left Immigration detention. I fought back tears of joy. Things go better. They asked about my situation, invited me to return anytime and offered a bed-space in their Hung Hom shelter. I stayed there for four months until I received ISS rent assistance to move into this $1200 room in Cheung Sha Wan – problem is I must come up with $200 each month or Mr. Wang goes mad, but that’s tomorrow’s problem and for now … Welcome to my castle, my friend!
Gharib 26, Central Africa
Emmanuel Jal’s story – the movie
May 1st, 2010 | Advocacy | Comment
“Left home at the age of seven – one year later I’m carryin’ an AK-47!”
For hip hop artist Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier in Sudan’s brutal civil war, these lyrics are hardly empty posturing. They are the bitter reality of a young man who was “forced to sin” but determined to “never give up and never give in.” Today, wounded but still hopeful, Emmanuel Jal fights a new battle: bringing peace to his beloved Sudan and building schools in Africa. This time, his weapon is a microphone. See why audiences from New York to Berlin to London rave about the award-winning film – WAR CHILD – and have embraced the hip-hop artist with a terrifying past and a gentle soul. Interspersing original interviews, live concerts, and rare footage of Emmanuel Jal as a seven year-old boy, War Child will make viewers cry, laugh, dance, and celebrate the power of hope. To see how much he has changed and how he donates his time and resources is very powerful and above all inspires other refugees to hold onto their dreams. Above all Emmanuel has such peace and love about him despite all the troubles he suffered.
Click here to watch the trailer: www.warchildmovie.com
Click here to go see the movie in June: Refugee Film Week
