From One Hell to Another: New Delhi’s Refugee Population

Author’s Note: This piece was originally written in September 2014 with interviews having taken place a month earlier. Names have been changed to ensure the privacy and safety of interviewees.

• Gamal Bakr Makaran: 30 years old, male, Somali. Family wiped out by a bomb blast in 2009.

• Abdulleh Mohammed: 19 years old, male, Somali. Father killed and aunt’s husband kidnapped from Mogadishu in 2008.

• Osman Abdurrahim: 19 years old, male, Somali. Elder brother kidnapped, family forcefully evicted from their house in Mogadishu in 2010.

• Salah Abukar: 24 years old, male, Somali – Ran away from home owing to repeated threats from militants in Somalia in 2002.

• Asma Ibrahim: 45 years old, female, Somali – Husband shot dead and daughter kidnapped in 1988.

These are a few heart-wrenching stories from Somali refugees living in parts of New Delhi, not very far from where most of the people I know in the city stay. Ironically, the localities in which they stay are lesser known or frequented, leave alone the people there.

Every time I meet interviewers like you, I get the same questions and nothing happens

I always was under the impression of Lajpat Nagar being one of the more posh localities, housing wealthy families indigenous to New Delhi if not for generations, certainly decades. In contrast, Wazirabad in East Delhi and Hauz Rani in South Delhi were lesser-known areas. In hindsight, I realize that a three-day-long excursion in the aforementioned localities eventually exposed far more than just the place itself.

Working at the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, New Delhi, refugees were perhaps our daily bread and butter for quite some time apart from, of course, more controversial issues like custodial violence, custodial deaths, terrorism, security laws, and freedom of speech and expression. Our internship supervisor Ravi Nair, had instructed us to go around the city and interview refugees’ current plight. It was meant to be quite an eye-opener.

Our combined experience with refugees was humbling at best and therefore predicting the impact interactions with refugees would have on us was unprecedented. In Delhi, there are a number of NGOs supporting refugees in different ways, the most known of them being the United Nations High Commission for Refugees [UNHCR] with field offices in Lajpat Nagar and Saket. They in turn, are supported by a variety of local NGOs such as Don Bosco and the Socio Legal Information Centre [SLIC] that run various educational programs and provide limited employment opportunities to refugees with skill sets. Some of the refugees we had interacted with were receiving, or in most cases had received, financial support from UNHCR and among the ones who were mobile, support from SLIC and Don Bosco. It was quite surprising to realise and be exposed to the deeper problems being faced by our city-mates owing to harsh treatment and hostility that quite effectively corrode the social integrity, tolerance, and inclusiveness we as Indians often boast of.

It is better to die once and not be dying everyday

Most of the refugees we interacted with were from Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, forced to flee the civil strife torn country under the threat of persecution and losing their lives. Their stories were heartening to say the least and while my co-interns had, I think, done well to blanket a deep feeling of sympathy and compassion for the suffering refugee population after their meeting with Chin refugees from Myanmar earlier on, I felt could not help feeling suffocated and extremely sympathetic to their plight. Walking through Hauz Rani’s narrow roads with tall, dark residential buildings adorning either side, small tin roof shops with goat and sheep carcasses hanging on hooks, groups of small children hanging around in a corner, women observing the happening’s below from their window ledge, and entrepreneurial shop vendors struggling to sell the day’s produce left us surprised – probably at the stark change in setting. No more than 2 kilometres away was one of New Delhi’s largest and popular shopping mall Select City Walk, thronged with people from Delhi’s high and low and here, people spent time thinking when their next meal would be. Flanked by two young Somali girls working with UNHCR’s local field office, we decided to split into two groups for interviewing male and female Somali’s separately. My colleague and I, walking up a flight of narrow and steep steps, strolled into a dim, long corridor and into a dark room, heavy with a feeling of melancholy and anguish.

Our very first interaction was with Gamal Bakr Makaran, a Somali 30-year old male who was unable to urinate with ease owing to a pelvic injury and had lost a testicle caused by a bomb blast in Mogadishu that wiped out his entire family in one shot and faced repeated threats by militants from Al Shabab in 2009. Visiting multiple hospitals in New Delhi including the All India Institute for Medical Sciences [AIIMS] and Fortis Hospital, Gurgaon brought little hope of envisioning a brighter future away from the harsh realities of living in an increasingly racist and communal India. Ultimately, he ran out of money to support himself and is now barely managing to breathe with the UNHCR’s subsistence allowance that too is a bare minimum amounting to 12,000 INR [roughly USD $200] every 3 months that he shares with an Ethiopian Somali refugee as rent. Support from other Somali’s living in the area also turned to discrimination once he began receiving UNHCR’s subsistence allowance owing to his ill health. In the end, a handshake and warm smile filled with hope from our effort in documenting his story were perhaps the only parting gift he could offer. Abdulleh Mohammed, a 19 year old Somali refugee lived with a few other Somali’s of his age in the area. While all of them had different stories to tell, they were doomed to the same fate. Daily incidents of racism, discrimination, sexual violence and harassment towards other female Somali’s, and physical violence were commonplace. One of them had even shown us medical reports confirming a broken hand and leg and another had kidney problems. Others complained of malnutrition, anaemia, and lack of employment opportunities that don’t pose a life threatening risk. In the end, the long walk to the metro station was accompanied with the great deal of guilt, and helplessness. We had much ground to cover.

Who taught you to speak our language? Speak your own language!

We then met Asma Ibrahim, a female Somali living in Bhogal, Jungpura with a family of 9 people. Cramped, and damp with a feeling of acute dejectedness, her house offered us a peek into the struggle of a female refugee without the support of a husband living in a densely populated area with little to do and think about. Listening to a mother’s story of having your son’s body chopped into pieces and returned in a plastic bag in Mogadishu as a result of clan-based rivalry and civil war sent a shiver down our spine. For a mother to relive the moment that occurred less than 3 years ago is no less than a test of sheer resilience and courage. Life here offered nothing different to life they faced in Somalia, especially where security and well-being was concerned.

A day later, we paid a visit to Wazirabad, a recently established settlement in the trans-Yamuna area. The area looked as though no civic administrative body either existed, or cared for the area or for the well-being of its residents. For refugees living in the area, communal harmony and employment are a distant dream. Even the local mosques are often centre-places of discrimination and hatred. Most of the Somali’s we interacted with complained of a lack of legal and administrative support and harassment by law enforcement agencies, including the police who repeatedly called and threatened them against persecution and forced deportation. Some even spoke of a widespread false belief accusing Somali’s of cannibalism. Life, as they said, was difficult. Living with sewage pipes right outside your window, or being refused any help from locals, or facing a lack of recognition and social acceptance is perhaps, worse than what Hannah Arendt would call a ‘bare naked life’.

Swollen livers, broken legs, arms, and bones, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and dysfunctional organs are some of the myriad problems refugees face. The refugees receive little care and attention from people around them, locals mostly. They suffer endlessly from trauma and bitter experiences with little support from either the community or any refugee assistance centres, compounded by the fact that India has till date not enacted any legislation recognising the status of refugees leave alone provide any form of assistance to them with the notable exception of the Tibetan population. Some of the refugees interviewed also complained of racial violence and sexual molestation at the hands of the locals, which perhaps, in a fit of rage I’d say is endemic to the region.

What are we doing here? We don’t live like human beings!

Asma Ibrahim echoed the above remark from her youngest daughter, 9 years old, during our interaction with her. Hannah Arendt, critiquing the lives of Jews in Nazi concentration camps spoke of the ease of killing animals than a human with a discernible identity. Systematic disengagement and disembodiment strips a human being of every idea that defines a ‘human’ and forces them to lead a ‘bare naked life’. The exclusionist approach we have become accustomed to employing towards foreign nationals covering territory outside our comfort zone be it even in the case of domestic workers have revolutionised the ‘Us v. Them’ concept into a highly pervasive parasite. It is high time we take into cognisance our inescapable social realities, and realise basic human dignity before we all begin, in our own respective way, leading ‘bare naked lives’.