In Indonesia, desperation grows for refugees trapped in limbo for years
‘They are waiting every day and night for a call. This waiting hurts.’
At least 13 people have committed suicide since 2014, including four people in the last year, according to refugees and asylum seekers who spoke to The New Humanitarian. This includes a 30-year-old Afghan man who hung himself in December at a facility funded by the UN’s migration agency, IOM, in Banten Province, west of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
“He hung there for a few hours before the police took the body away. Nobody checked on us,” said a refugee living in the same facility, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions.
Aid groups and refugees themselves describe growing desperation as options narrow for Indonesia’s nearly 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Indonesia is typically seen as a transit country rather than a destination for asylum seekers – half of whom come from Afghanistan. Others left countries like Somalia, Myanmar, Iraq, and Sudan.
