Pakistan’s persecuted minorities: For Ahmadi refugees in Thailand, problems double back home

Pakistan

Pakistan’s persecuted minorities: For Ahmadi refugees in Thailand, problems double back home

By Abdul Manan
Published: July 5, 2011

A Pakistani refugee who is a member of the Ahmadiyya, an Islamic minority sect, carries his daughter as he is released from a detention centre in Bangkok June 6, 2011. PHOTO: REUTERS/ FILE

BANGKOK: Irfanul Mulk may have been able to find temporary shelter in Thailand, but those who forced him out of Pakistan are now flexing their muscles to bring him back.

Irfan, 27, left his village Taban in Punjab’s Sheikhupura district after he and his two brothers Furqanul Mulk, 21, and Umer Sultan, 31, were held under Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 298-C which prohibits Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslim or “in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims”. A police case was lodged against them but residents refused to calm down, and the three men decided to leave the country.

“When people of the village learnt about our detention and asylum applications, they approached the Sheikhupura District police chief and submitted an application seeking our repatriation to Pakistan calling us traitors who had maligned the country abroad,” Irfan told The Express Tribune.

Since then, the police have raided their home several times and their elder brother Haider Sultan, who stayed back in Pakistan, is facing constant threats.

Representatives of the Tehrik-i-Khatm-i-Nubuwat, an organisation that has repeatedly attacked the Ahmadiyya community for its religious beliefs, have even written to the US Embassy in Pakistan, warning them against giving American nationality to Irfan and his brothers.

But while Irfan and his brothers had to suffer at the hands of their neighbours, there are others who have been persecuted by their own families.

Syed Altaf Hussain Bukhari, the grandson of a renowned pir* whose shrine is located on the outskirts of Islamabad, moved to Thailand in November 2010 with his wife Sadia and their two children. They were forced to flee after his family cut off ties with them for having converted in 1996 to the Ahmadi faith and even subjected him to physical torture.

“When I announced that I was becoming an Ahmadi, my brothers and a cousin, who was the caretaker of the shrine at that point, immediately denounced their relationship with me,” he said. His brothers started telling followers that he was not their real brother as their father had adopted him. Pamphlets bearing his photograph were distributed in Sheikhupura, calling him liable to be murdered.

To protect his wife and children, Altaf, who survived the deadly attacks on Ahmadiyya worship places in Lahore in May 2010, left his ancestral village to move to Sheikhupura and eventually, in 2003, he moved to Lahore where they went into hiding.

Once his people back home learnt that he was seeking asylum in Thailand, they started threatening his father-in-law as well.

Shahid Mehmood, who fled from Multan where he had an established business, said that he had witnessed the beheading of two Ahmadi doctors in March 2009 and insisted on registering an FIR against a pir for instigating his followers to murder Ahmadis. “His followers would visit my shop daily and try to persuade me to withdraw the case,” says Mehmood. “I went to three senior police officers who threw the file in my face and told me that they were followers of [the pir] and could not dare to proceed against him.”

But after another Ahmadi man Rana Ataul Kareem was murdered in August 2009 and the case was traced back to the pir, Mehmood started to receive threats. In September 2010, Mehmood, his wife and four children, arrived in Bangkok.

Back home, Mehmood’s shops have been closed and his house has been sealed.

Many families decided to send younger members abroad while parents stayed back. Aamir Ali, 22, left his village Pasrur in Punjab’s Sialkot district along with his three sisters. But after news of them seeking asylum spread, villagers started to taunt their mother, who has had to regularly switch homes.

* The name of the pir is being withheld on the request of Bukhari.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5th, 2011.

Copyrighted © 2011 The Express Tribune News Network
URL: http://tribune.com.pk/story/202641/pakistans-persecuted.../

Insecure minorities: Threatened at home, jailed abroad

Pakistan

Insecure minorities: Threatened at home, jailed abroad

By Abdul Manan
July 04, 2011

The refugees, all members of the Ahmadi community, had been in detention for more than six months. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

BANGKOK: Tahir Mehmood Adil, an Ahmadi from Sialkot, was kidnapped in 2009 by militants, held captive for 36 days and threatened with beheading. His cousin, Sajjad, negotiated successfully for his release. A few days later, however, Sajjad was shot dead and Adil received a text message saying he would be next.

That was when Adil fled to Thailand with his wife and three children. On arrival, he was arrested by Thai immigration authorities who tore up their asylum papers and took them to Bangkok’s notorious Immigration Detention Cell (IDC). The family was detained here for the next seven months in the most inhumane conditions.

Detained refugees

Adil is one of 96 such refugees from Pakistan whose fate hangs in balance as they are transferred from one detention centre to another, despite having their status recognised by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

By December 2010, the Thai immigration bureau detained 91 Pakistanis seeking asylum on grounds of religious persecution in their home country. Another 38 were detained in the early months of 2011.

Of the 131 Ahmadis at Bangkok’s Suan Phlu IDC, 35 were sent back in the last week of December. The remaining 96 refused to budge on grounds that it amounted to suicide. These persons were finally released with the support of the Thai committee for refugees in June.

The group now reports to the immigration bureau every month. Their situation has improved as compared to their time in the IDC but they are not allowed to leave their residence without permission from the local police.

Inhumane conditions

This group, including 34 children, now lives in two separate confinement centres and apartments in a Bangkok suburb. Each family has a single room. For them there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The refugees are awaiting resettlement to third countries, mainly the US.

The conditions at the detention centre were worse, says Adil as he looks back at his time there. The cells where they were detained were designed to hold around 40 but housed 150 detainees. Women and children were separated from the men.

The choice was clear. Stay in the IDC or go back to Pakistan. It is an unending battle. Two of the detainees who have been in IDC for 23 months were granted bail but the UNHCR refused to recognise their status. Two others who were at the last step of their resettlement process were told to repeat the entire process.

Painful process

Adil told The Express Tribune that everyone had a story to tell. He acknowledged that even though they were aware of Thailand not being a signatory to the UNHCR’s convention on refugees, their fate in Pakistan was one which would be worse and that is why they decided to come here.

Adil said that the process of seeking asylum and refugee status from UNHCR was lengthy and painful. He said interviews don’t take place for months, much beyond the mandatory three-month period. The resettlement is another lengthy process in which refugees are informed about their final destination.

Individual stories

The stories go on. Qamar and Mansoor who had been in the centre for the last two years had been granted bail but they were later refused refugee status. After their release, their resettlement process had slowed down.

One Rana Qamar had been detained along with his two children while his wife was in Pakistan. Qamar’s 11 year old daughter, Areesha, was detained for seven months all alone.

Another detainee, Adnan Rashid, said that he was in detention but his wife and two children were not. He feared for them.

Doctors who escaped targeted killings at home are also part of the group. Dr Hafeez Ahmad, who hails from Karachi said that after his colleagues, Dr Hameedullah Shah and Dr Najamul Hassan were shot dead he decided to leave. But not after shifting his clinic four times in a bid to discourage those targeting him.

Kashif Butt whose wife gave birth to their child in the IDC recalls his horrible experience. When his wife was taken to the nearby hospital, her legs were tied so she could not run away. In another case, a Pakistani woman’s feet were bound when she went in for a caesarean procedure.

Every day is a living hell for many. The Ahmadiyya Community representative in Thailand Imran Ahmad told The Express Tribune that the future of those family members who later joined their next of kin hangs in balance.

Despite all the frustration and the fear, most are fearful of returning to Pakistan. Some laugh and others cry at the mention of their home country. But all pray for their future and for those left behind.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4th, 2011.

Copyrighted © 2011 The Express Tribune News Network
URL: tribune.com.pk/story/202056/insecure-minorities.../