The Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM)
PRESS STATEMENT 0CTOBER 28, 2004
Thai army massacreof Muslims condemned
The Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) condemns Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for justifying the death of 78 Muslims to their fasting during the month of Ramadhan. We also condemn the military forces of Thailand for its high handedness in dealing with Muslim demonstrators in Tak Bai district of the southern province of Narathiwat that killed 84, mostly young Muslim villagers.
In a span of six months, the Thai Army has killed at least 116 Muslims due to high handedness and overreaction. Apparently, the Thai military have no sufficient training in crowd control. So, they easily pull the trigger out of anxiety and fear. Out of faint regard for Muslim lives, the Thai Army seriously treated Muslims inhumanely.
In view of the seriousness of the situation, we call upon the government of Thailand to solve the problem through the root causes and cease applying cosmetic solutions. Among the root causes of the problem are poverty and government neglect of the non-Buddhists part of the country. If the government does not want to face the problem squarely, it should consider giving Muslims self-rule, or at least a meaningful autonomy. This way will enable them to find a way to fend for themselves.
We take serious consideration of the denunciation by the Chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat province, Abdul Rahman Abdul Samad, over the Thai Army's crackdown on demonstrators, warning that the military's over reaction could result in more violence. Abdul Rahman said, "had the Thai troops acted with greater restraints, the incident would not have ended with so many lost of lives and arrests." ABIM hopes that all parties will exercise restraints and find a way to prevent the recurrence of similar incident in future. Any form of violence will not solve the problem, but may even worsen the mess.
ABIM calls upon the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to establish a commission of inquiry into this bloody incident, since it is the second in six months, after the tragedy of Kresek Mosque. Malaysia as Chairman of the OIC must take a proactive action similar to the peace initiatives being undertaken in the Muslim South of the Philippines.
In like manner, the United Nations should also send a special fact-finding committee to look into the massacres of Muslim minorities in a growing sense of insensitivity that is getting more serious in Southern Thailand lately.
The government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra must be held fully responsible for the mass murders of Muslims who were holding peaceful demonstration, while undergoing the observance of fasting, during the holy month of Ramadhan.
As an immediate measure to avoid the escalation of atrocities, and to restore peace in South Thailand, ABIM urge the Thaksin government to take the following the steps:
1. To release all demonstrators that were detained. Staging a peaceful demonstration is a right guaranteed by all democratic nations.
1. To refrain from equating such peaceful demonstration to terrorism because the real issue in South Thailand has been about poverty and government's neglect of meaningful development.
1. To set up a high level Commission to handle the issue on poverty and development with the active involvement of local leaders.
1. To accept the Malaysian government's offer to help develop South Thailand in both spiritual and physical developments.
Funds for the victims' families
In solidarity with the marginalized Muslims in Southern Thailand, ABIM is launching a Special Fund Drive, in behalf of the coalition of NGOs (MAPAN), to assist families of the Tak Bai massacre victims to cope with the loss of their breadwinners, and in the observance of the Feast of Eid-il Fitr.
Donations can be sent to ABM Amin, Acc. No. 80507261 (Sort Code: 20-47-44) (Barclays). For further information please contact Mr. Azril Mohd Amin at 02084584344 or email at a.
Ahmadi Family update: "Friendless and desperate in Germany"
Though the family have permission to remain in Germany until 2005, the conditions of the temporary admission are harsh to the extreme. The family still receive support and visits from the many friends they made in the UK.
Family snatched from mosque fight to survive
After Britain shattered their lives again, the Ahmadis are friendless and desperate in Germany, writes Krysia Diver
The Observer Sunday 31st October 2004
For Feriba Ahmadi, the morning when deportation officers came is seared in her memory. Clad in riot gear, they rammed their way into the Ghausia Jamia mosque at Stourbridge in the West Midlands, where she and her family were taking refuge.
For the Ahmadis, who had fled Afghanistan after being targeted by the Taliban, it was the start of a new nightmare that would see them deported to yet another strange country where they would struggle to eke out an uncertain existence below the poverty line.
'It was 6am and my husband, Farid, and I were fast asleep,' Feriba says, barely able to hold back her tears. 'I woke up to what sounded like bombs going off and for a second I thought I was back in Afghanistan. I was totally confused because I knew I was in a place of sanctity.'
Seconds later, in full view of a media scrum, the couple were seized and imprisoned in Handsworth, Birmingham, while friends they had made in their adopted community looked after their children, son Seear and daughter Hadia, then aged four and six.
Locked alone in her prison room, Feriba watched news reports of their eviction. 'The government wanted to use us as a symbol, and send a message to the world that they were tough on asylum seekers. Even my poor mother, who was dying of cancer in Kabul, saw us in the newspapers. She thought we had escaped the fighting in Afghanistan to find peace in England.'
Feriba, 26, burns with rage at how they were treated. 'We had brains, hearts and souls and all we wanted was to work and settle down in England. Instead of getting compassion, we were made out to be liars and treated like serial killers.'
The Ahmadis were deported to Germany in August 2002. There they believed they would gain immediate rights to settle, but are still required to renew their residency permits every six months and live in a barren, soulless detention centre.
'We have no security, no friends, no life,' says Feriba, who has been diagnosed as medically depressed.
Home is a camp for asylum seekers on the outskirts of Landsberg, in Bavaria, where the family shares a bedroom separated from a poky kitchen and bathroom by a long, dark public corridor. On display are photos of happier times: a wedding picture, two beaming schoolgirls - one an English blonde and the other a dark-haired Afghan.
The living room door clicks open and a girl with two thick plaits and large saucer eyes peeks in.
Feriba feigns a smile for her daughter. Hadia plonks herself next to her mother. In fluent German - she has equally mastered English - she says she misses her friend Rosi, the bubbly blonde girl in the photograph. 'We used to play together, but now she's just my pen pal.' Abruptly, she disappears into the bedroom.
Six-year-old Seear is rummaging through a cardboard box full of toys - a Buzz Lightyear, a Batman model, cars and plastic animals, hand-me-downs from English friends. He springs over to his mother, drinks the dregs of her cold cardamom coffee and slips off to find his sister. Feriba whispers: 'Hadia and Seear are very sad. They have no friends and feel so isolated. My son's favourite teacher in England was an Indian woman called Mrs Jasmine. Even now, he always tells me to put on my Indian dress so I look like her.'
The nostalgia in Feriba's voice turns bitter as she recalls when she discovered her family had lost its appeal against deportation to Germany.
The blow was delivered on Christmas Eve 2002 as a suicidal Feriba lay in a hospital bed. Although the High Court ruled there had been a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the raid on the mosque 'was proportionate to the aim of exercising an effective immigration control'.
She says the family escaped Afghanistan after their home was bombed and Farid, 36, had been tortured by the Taliban. Her husband takes over from his now blubbering wife: 'Feriba was pregnant and we had been to visit her father. When we returned, our house was a pile of rubble. The Taliban came asking for money. They wrapped telephone cables around my big toes and gave me electric shocks.'
He leaves the room quietly. 'It's Ramadan and my husband must pray now,' Feriba explains. She has been pre scribed anti-depressants and is too weak to fast.
The Ahmadis say they fled Afghanistan in 2000 with visas and passports, but their paperwork and money were stolen soon after they arrived in Germany from Ukraine.
'We were left with nothing and nowhere to turn. I was crying in the street when a policeman took us to a camp for asylum seekers. Ten months later, we all got into the back of a lorry and ended up in England.'
They were dispersed to Lye, in Stourbridge, where they lived on a housing estate for a year. Despite campaigns to Downing Street and a 1,000-signature petition to keep them in England, the family was deported.
A spokesman for the Landsberg office for asylum seekers said the family had been granted permission to stay until February 2005. He added that the arrangement would remain in place until German ministers met to assess the political situation in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Farid earns €400 (£277) a month in a factory, and Feriba has completed a six-month intensive German course and two months' volunteer work at a hospital.
'It has been one nightmare after another,' she says.
West Midlands police and Immigration officials storm Gnausia Jamia mosque
Ahmadi Family Deportation delayed! as tension runs high around the Ghausia Jamia mosque
The Observer Sunday 31st October 2004
"detention of asylum seekers violates their right to freedom and incites racism among the population, and therefore other solutions must be found,"
Detaining asylum seekers 'gives rise to xenophobia and racism'
Michael Carabott, Malta IndependentOnline 29/10/04
The detention of asylum seekers violates their right to freedom and incites racism among the population, and therefore other solutions must be found, Fr Pierre Grech Marguerat of the Jesuit Refugee Service said yesterday.
Fr Grech Marguerat made this remark in reaction to questions from the floor after the launch of a JRS Europe document entitled Detention in Europe: Administrative Detention of Asylum Seekers and Irregular Immigrants.
He said: "Arbitrary, indefinite detention of irregular migrants, as well as detention policies, have always occupied a top position on the JRS' agenda."
Fr Grech Marguerat said the JRS does not agree with the government's policy of detaining illegal immigrants. "It does not act as a deterrent, it does not help in establishing people's identity; instead it criminalises them, normalises exclusion and administrative imprisonment - which also sparks xenophobia and racism - and is an enormous financial burden," he said. He said it was gravely worrying that detention has been shifted from being a means to facilitate the removal of designated individuals to becoming a reception policy for all.
"The policy is also in stark contrast to the recent political agreement with the EU Council for Justice and Home Affairs, which stipulates that no EU member shall hold a person in detention for the sole reason of being an asylum seeker," he said.
Fr Grech Marguerat said the JRS-Europe document, issued on 1 October, was extensive and was intended to inform, alert and serve as an advocacy tool on the rights of detainees.
"It contains an overview of detention centres (including Malta), EU detention policies and national legislation, as well as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and public international law," he explained.
He appealed for the European Parliament and the Council of Europe to draft a common definition of detention and detention centres and to compile and update a publicly accessible list of detention centres in the whole of Europe.He said JRS-Europe asked the European Commission to set up an EU system and body, independent of the detention centres, to monitor and report on the development of national legislation on detention and detention practices in Europe. He explained that the document also contained a list of criteria regarding which people should not be put into detention.
These include pregnant women, children, older children, people with psychiatric problems and post-natal mothers.
"We have seen some improvement with children who arrive in Malta, but more still needs to be done. With a policy of detention, we are making the Maltese people think that these people are criminals whereas law clearly states that they are not," he said.
He said that the European Human Rights Commissioner had paid a visit to various Maltese detention centres and said that conditions were not good enough. "Take Safi barracks for example; there are 350 people living in tents. It rained last Tuesday night and they had to bed down for the night in mud," he said.
"There are no set standards. We have a situation where soldiers are looking after these people and they cannot do so satisfactorily because they do not have the right training," he said.
The JRS also says that Malta's processing of asylum applications is not quick enough. "People have waited months and even up to a year for their application to be processed and that was not good enough. Things have improved and applications are processed within a few months. But a couple of months in detention is still harmful," said Fr Grech Marguerat.
Fr Marguerat said the full extent of trauma caused by such detention could not be quantified. "Detention does lead to racism and xenophobia. The Maltese people only see these asylum seekers in a bad light, because only negative things appear in the media," he said.
He also said that pictures of immigrants arriving in Malta, handcuffed and being taken to court had been circulated around the world. "Also the fact that Malta and Europe have a closed immigration policy does not help in the slightest. Such a situation is leading to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers being undermined because economic migrants get thrown into the mix," he said.
Fr Grech Marguerat said that all relevant stakeholders needed to get together to properly discuss the issue to find alternatives to find a solution. "Detention is not a deterrent, and we need to find an alternative," he concluded.