By Zach Hope
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Singapore: When we met Bibi Rahimi Farhangdost in Indonesia early last year, she was so despairing of her chances of resettlement, so destitute and lonely, she admitted there were times she thought it would have been better to have died in Afghanistan.
If she’d stayed behind, her ageing father wouldn’t have sold everything he owned to get her from Ghazni to Indonesia, a nation they thought would be safe and short-term. As a nurse and teacher in Afghanistan, she could have kept providing for her extended family.
Bibi Rahimi Farhangdost in the Indonesian town of Ciawi in February last year. Credit: Zach Hope
At least for a little while. The Taliban would have killed her soon enough, like they did her two brothers and a sister. They had already tried once.
As it went, she left her country, arriving alone in Indonesia at the age of 23 at a time when the waiting list at the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for third-country resettlement was supposedly a few years.
When my Indonesia-based colleague Karuni Rompies and I met Rahimi in Ciawi, a town about 60 kilometres south of Jakarta, she had been waiting for a decade.
Indonesia forbids refugees from working, so she spent her time volunteering as an interpreter while living in a boarding house with penniless Indonesian women and surviving on international handouts to the equivalent of about $4 a day.
Things got worse. Cash-strapped and prioritising more high-profile crises elsewhere, the UNHCR last year pulled funding for hundreds of refugees in Indonesia, including Rahimi. Random donations from citizens and charities helped her through.
Then, last week, Karuni received a message we never expected.
“I just want to share with you and brother Zach the good news that my resettlement process goes smoothly and I will leave for Australia soon.”
Bibi Rahimi Farhangdost about to leave Indonesia for Australia.
Rahimi left Indonesia for Tasmania on Tuesday. The extraordinary efforts of her father, who died in 2020 having never seen his daughter again, had not been in vain.
As she left Indonesia with a group of other refugees, she sent us this photo from the airport in Jakarta.
We’re now waiting to hear how it went — and get her first impressions of the Tasmanian winter. Her goal has been to work with a human rights organisation helping people in her now-former situation.
It’s not often enough in journalism that you can follow up a heartbreaking story with a positive outcome. This is one of those times. Reality, though, is never far behind.
Bibi Rahimi is the exception – one of the fortunate few who qualified for resettlement in Australia.
Only the day before she left (a coincidence), more than 200 of the 5000-plus refugees stuck indefinitely in Indonesia demonstrated peacefully outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
They requested politicians in Canberra amend rules rejecting the resettlement of refugees who arrived in Indonesia after July 1, 2014 – a policy designed to discourage desperate people lobbing on Australia’s doorstep.
They also want the Australian government to review previously rejected cases from 2009 to 2016 and to help accelerate the resettlement process.
Indonesia never signed up to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, meaning the government there has no obligation to help them – with horrific consequences. Refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia are among the most destitute and vulnerable people on earth.
Afghan refugees in Indonesia demonstrate outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Credit: Karuni Rompies
The Afghan refugees say at least 19 of their number have taken their own lives in recent years, including a case of self-immolation outside the UNHCR’s Jakarta office last year, while dozens more have died from untreated illnesses.
Organisers said they had been collecting money for months to hire the buses that ferried the demonstrators to our country’s embassy in Jakarta’s south.
The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to say if anyone came out to speak with them.
One of the demonstrators, Suhaila Mohammadi, told Karuni she had registered with the UNHCR in February 2017 and was told she and her family would be resettled to a third country within 30 months.
“After nine years, the UNHCR still has not interviewed me to determine my status,” she said.
In that time, one of her three children, a nine-month-old boy, died. “It is because we were living on the street. My son got sick,” she said.
Another demonstrator, Masoda Hani, said many family members had been killed by the Taliban. Returning to Afghanistan was out of the question.
“I go to the UNHCR and complain about the situation [in Indonesia] and they said, ‘you should find a sponsor’. If we had a sponsor … I wouldn’t live here for almost nine years,” she said.
Mehran Haydari, one of the organisers of Monday’s action, complained of Indonesian authorities fining people upwards of $1400 if they were caught working. None of the refugees had that sort of money, forcing some to rely on loan sharks.
Returning to Afghanistan is out of the question for Masoda Hani.Credit: Karuni Rompies
The UNHCR in Indonesia said 175 people had been resettled in third countries so far this year, significantly down on 2024.
“The US has been one of the largest recipients of refugee resettlement from Indonesia, but since the beginning of this year, they have suspended their global resettlement program, impacting refugees in Indonesia,” a spokesperson said.
The Australian Department of Home Affairs said it was “aware of recent protests” and remained “committed to a generous humanitarian program”.
“Despite the darkness, many of us strive every day to learn, grow, and stay hopeful,” the refugees wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in May.
“We study what we can, we teach our children in makeshift classrooms, and we build skills to prepare for a day when someone, somewhere, might give us a chance.
“Among us are teachers, engineers, artists, tailors, drivers, caregivers – people who are simply waiting for a door to open. With opportunity, we could become not a burden, but a blessing to any community that welcomes us. We want nothing more than to contribute, to belong, and to live with dignity.”
For these refugees, for now, Bibi Rahimi and her group will have to do.
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