Little did I know, in 2012, when I took up my post in Christ Church, Bangkok, that a significant aspect of my work would involve ministry amongst Pakistani refugees.
When I arrived in Thailand, in late 2012, there were just a few Pakistani refugees living in Bangkok. However, in December 2013, the numbers began to increase, quite rapidly. It is difficult to put an accurate figure but estimates from relief agencies have been as high as 10,000 refugees from Pakistan alone in the city of Bangkok. There were also Sri Lankan (Tamil) refugees, and a few from a variety of Middle Eastern countries.
Whilst some of these refugees were undoubtedly economic migrants, a great majority were Christians, escaping persecution in Pakistan, many from the city of Lahore, but also other urban centres. Their presence in Bangkok posed a significant challenge to all the English-speaking churches in the city. We felt overwhelmed by the humanitarian need that we encountered. I estimate that we welcomed between 60 – 80 urban refugees to our Sunday worship most weeks. Some made Christ Church their spiritual home; others tended to be more nomadic. It was quite normal to hear stories of refugees who spent their Sundays travelling between the different English-speaking churches, seeking financial assistance from each in turn, after every service.
Why did we suddenly get such an influx of Christian refugees in Thailand?
I have little doubt that the majority of refugees who turned up in Christ Church were genuine. They were fleeing persecution in Islamic countries. All had left for fear of their lives. I heard stories of murder, torture, rape and violence perpetrated against Christian believers in Pakistan. I have seen the scars on the heads and backs of Christian men. The crime of one family? The son of a Muslim neighbour asked them to pray for him when he was unwell. He recovered, and the boy’s father and uncle came round and beat them up. I met a family whose son had been kidnapped, taken out of town, and left dead. When I asked one young woman why she chose in remain in Thailand when there was so obviously so little future for her there, she simply replied, “If I return to Pakistan my Muslim uncles will either rape me or murder me, or probably both.”
My experience of ministering amongst refugees left me in little doubt – nobody chooses this lifestyle. It is not a life option that you adopt willingly or lightly. I met ordinary, decent people, who felt that they had no other option except to flee into the unknown.
Pakistani refugees came to Bangkok because it was one of the easiest places for them to reach. Travelling west from Pakistan was not an option. Travelling east (discounting India, Myanmar and China, which would never grant admission) Thailand is next in line. There is a UNHCR office in Bangkok, whose proximity is undoubtedly a factor in choice of destination. Thailand also has a relatively easy entry procedure – you can enter Thailand on a 30-day visitor visa – but can then slip below the radar and live in hiding in the city. However, Thailand is an extremely dangerous place to be a refugee. Without a visa, refugees become illegal. Whilst there may appear to be considerable tolerance, there are periodic ‘round ups’ of illegal entrants, who are then held in the Immigration Detention Centre – a fate at least as bad as prison, with up to 200 people held in a single cell with just about enough room for all to lie on the floor to sleep. Thailand has not signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights, so refugees are in a vulnerable position. Opportunities for earning an income are non-existent. Most refugees arrived with some money – it was those with some savings who were able to fly to Thailand, but once there, their finances rapidly depleted. It is illegal to work without a work permit, so inevitably any opportunities for employment resulted in exploitation by unscrupulous employers, looking for cheap labour. In consequence, refugees who arrived in Thailand with money find themselves penniless within a few months.
Refugees live with the daily fear of arrest and incarceration in the International Detention Centre, where hundreds of illegal immigrants are detained in locked cells – over 100 people to a cell.
The help that we, as a church, could provide was limited. Of course, they were welcome to worship with us (we were a congregation of over 40 nationalities). But Christ Church was, in effect, just one ‘parish’ church with limited resources (even if the ‘parish’ consisted of the whole of Thailand). Many refugees had unrealistic expectations of the resources available to us. Often, I was told, ‘but you are the Anglican Church’, assuming that I had direct access to the resources of the Anglican Communion. Frequently, I was confronted with requests for aid, being offered CVs and detailed accounts of atrocities, with the seeming assumption that I was in a position of authority and could intervene on their behalf.
We did what we could. At church, we could provide meals for asylum seekers - breakfast and lunch on Sundays and lunch on Thursdays. We tried to offer Thai language classes and an English conversation group – skills that would be useful. We sought to provide special events. Every December we offered a Christmas party – giving the refugees use of the church kitchen for the day to cook a Pakistani meal, with activities and presents for the children. We were even able to put on bus trips to the beach, until it was deemed too unsafe to take travel too far with refugees. Inevitably, whatever we could offer by way of support was limited.
We did have a church team that made weekly visits to the Immigration Detention Centre. Whenever we could obtain the names of detainees, we could ‘call them out’, at least giving them an hour out of their cell. This was the only occasion when the sexes could mix, so if nothing else, husbands and wives were able to see each other. Communication with us was through chicken wire, with a six-foot guarded passage between us.
As the refugee situation worsened, we were able to partner with a new charity, set up across the city. Liferaft is a Christian charity, created specifically to work with urban refugees. It works by partnering with local churches and supports refugees who are known to be part of a worshipping Christian community. By working with Liferaft, we sought to provide accountability and to be even-handed in our support. We could give our allocation of support money for refugees to Liferaft, who, in turn, developed a system for registering and assessing the support that was offered to refugees, then paying back to a Christ Church Co-ordinator the agreed monthly allowances for each of our registered families. Refugee families were asked to work with an Advocate (a friend who is part of the church) to produce a monthly budget sheet, to be honest in declaring all sources of income, and also to demonstrate that they were willing to use their time in the city creatively, seeking to change their mindset away from a ‘victim’ mentality, to recognise that they were in Bangkok for the long-term and that even within the confines of being a refugee, they could still be aiming to use their time creatively to learn and develop their gifts
For the most part, Pakistani refugees in Bangkok were there for the long term. Since I have left Bangkok, many of the refugees I knew have been relocated to Canada, one of the few countries who are admitting Pakistani asylum seekers. The process is long and torturous. Others remain in Bangkok and need our prayers. To be granted asylum status by the UN is a process that can take many years, (and in a pre-requisite for applying for admission to a ‘third’ country). Many have their application refused. To then be resettled in a ‘third’ country takes many years more. Many refugees are likely never to be resettled and so be stuck in Bangkok for life.
When I left Bangkok, I was asked by my churchwardens, “What precisely do you do for the refugees?” It was a difficult question to answer. The best I could manage was, “I treat them with respect, recognise them as members of the church, just like all other members, and offer them love.”
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