FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Life, death and hope: Inside Bangkok Immigration Detention Centre 

Life, death and hope: Inside Bangkok Immigration Detention Centre 

A few days before the Sacrifice Feast of Eid marking the end of Ramadan in late June, a Somali migrant who had fled her war-torn homeland passed away in a Bangkok hospital.

“When she dies, she will be forgotten,” a compatriot who had paid her hospital bills had said a day before. Migrants’ rights advocate Sharma’arke Sharif intervened after surmising that the UNHCR wasn’t going to.
The 60-year-old woman, Fadumo Omar Bakai, had been in and out of hospital, often from Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in Suan Phlu, for a few years for an undiagnosed blood disease, which had progressed to lung cancer and organ shutdown. In a more organised system it would have been easier for her to receive treatment, according to Sharif, who teaches English and manages an import-export business with links in Thailand, Somalia and the Middle East. He says eventually the UNHCR assisted financially, but only due to his persistence.
“Nobody pushed to have her admitted to the hospital,” he says. “There’s not enough accountability.” 
He hopes Thailand will join the more than 140 countries signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which provides those who flee their homeland protections beyond the basic asylum guaranteed under the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The English teacher and businessman liases with Bangkok embassies including the UAE, Qatar and South Africa to help nationals of countries without missions here. He has faith that the zakat (charity) tradition of Islam combined with advocacy mitigates the suffering of migrants today – of whom there are more than at any time since World War II. 
He says the ability to assist refugees in need would greatly increase if the convention were in place in Thailand.
Sharif’s spirit of advocacy is also reflected in the work of Expats Helping Those in Need (ESTiN), a small but dedicated group of women from various countries that visits detainees in the IDC every week. ESTiN member Latifa Handley explains how the group supplies detainees with supplementary food, medicine, hygiene packs and baby formula and reading material, in addition to “a friendly face providing hope and the fact that human kindness still exists”.
Recently, students from the Model United Nations Club at Mahidol University International Demonstration School joined ESTiN members on a visit to the IDC, to show signs of care from the outside world to migrants from crisis-stricken countries like Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan and Afghanistan.
Anyone can visit here as long as they bring identification. 
After signing in and going through airport-style security procedures, the din from tens of conversations between migrants on one side of the divide and visitors on the other is loud enough that some of what is said across the metre-wide chasm, separated by two simple barricades, is lost into the air unless backed up with hand gestures.
Although individual messages can be hard to discern above the cacophony, many of the students were able to converse with the migrants. ESTiN’s Handley explains that the women and children here are kept separately from the men apart from monthly visits, and that an opportunity to accept food and other necessities from outsiders provides a rare chance for relatives to see each other again.
“The Palestinians came together as a family. They seem to love each other a lot,” one student remarked after her conversation that day. “It’s nice to see them together as a family. They’ve been here for over a year. I wish I could help them somehow.”
Two Pakistani Christians fleeing religious persecution in their homeland, a brother and sister, put more human faces to one of the major human rights concerns that day, sharing with another student how they had been arrested in their Bangkok condominium for overstaying their visa. “We cannot live in Thailand or Pakistan,” they explained.
Several of the 20, mostly Thai students on the visit said afterwards it had provided a unique insight into a little-seen world, and that they felt they had glimpsed what it meant to be a global citizen with concern that stretched across borders and ethnicities.
One student remarked that the Somali man she visited was smiling and laughing. “I thought the person I would meet would be sad and desperate. But he was a very positive person. At least I feel good that he is fine with his life, but at the same time I feel bad for him that he feels good with his life,” she said.
“I think in order to perceive and understand most issues happening in the world it is essential to be aware that it is very easy to judge people based on a national perspective, on their gender or the place they come from. I imagine the day when we are able to teach the young to be careful, and to be aware of and understand each other for the sake of humanity and see people more deeply beyond their appearance.”

The Bangkok Immigration Detention Centre in Suan Phlu is open to visitors with ID on weekdays from 10.30 to 11.30am. 

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