Pakistani Christian refugees in Thailand continue to protest UNHCR ‘unfair’

Pakistani Christian asylum seekers in Thailand have criticised the role of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in dealing with their cases.

In March, World Watch Monitor reported that there were about 11,500 Pakistanis seeking asylum in Thailand, a 51 per cent increase from the previous year; all are classified as Christians in a detailed report by UK-based researchers.

Recent interviews have revealed that the Christians feel the UNHCR treats their applications unsympathetically and thereby delays their resettlement.

This, despite the fact that in April, World Watch Monitor reported that UN officials issued temporary ID cards for them, in order to catch up with the acknowledged backlog of applications.

This move was in response to a BBC documentary, shown worldwide, which highlighted the plight of those, who, having “overstayed”, were then arrested and locked up in detention centres in Thailand. Members of the British Parliament urged their government to adopt a harsher official assessment of Pakistan’s treatment of Christians.

The MPs said UN officials in Thailand were not sufficiently concerned that Christians “face a real risk of persecution” if returned to their home country, the officials quoting Britain’s current, less-than-urgent assessment of Pakistan as partial justification.

One of the Christians now in Thailand is Talib Masih, accused of insulting Islam in an incident in Gojra (in Pakistan’s Punjab Province) in 2009, which led to seven Christians being killed and more than 100 Christian homes set on fire. This saw the first spike in numbers as thousands of Christians fled to Thailand with the hope of eventual resettlement in the West.

Masih reached Bangkok in 2011, after having been forced, for fear of his life, to go into hiding in Pakistan for two years.

“A group of Christians who brought me here have been resettled in the Netherlands, but the UNHCR has refused, and totally closed, my application,” Masih told World Watch Monitor. “Now I don’t know how to live in Thailand, but also I don’t feel safe going back to Pakistan.”

“I was living in Lahore when I had my passport done, but the UNHCR objected that my passport should have been from Gojra, where I lived before,” he said. “All my documents were burned in the fire and I could not go back to Gojra to get new ones [because it would be unsafe], but the UNHCR is unwilling to accept my claim.”