Dec 3, 2021: For a month, a group of Afghan Hazara refugees, some of whom have been living in limbo in Medan, Indonesia for almost a decade, had been staging a 24-hour protest in a makeshift camp in front of the Indonesian Organization for Migration (IOM) office, sleeping in tents pitched in the forecourt.

Since 2016, at least 13 Afghan refugees have died by suicide in Indonesia. They had been waiting to be resettled for between six and 11 years.

One of them Ahmad Shah, 22, probably felt that he had been patient enough.

It was too late by the time his friend, Ezat Najafi, sensed there was something wrong when Shah began behaving erratically. Soon after, Shah decided to set himself on fire, and Najafi did not realise that anything was amiss until he saw his friend, clearly agitated, pacing in front of the building and shouting incoherently.

According to Shah, “I said, ‘Please don’t do this’. Suddenly he poured petrol on his clothes and took out two lighters, one in each hand. I tried to talk to him and told him to be patient but he didn’t listen.”

Shah himself, who had travelled to Indonesia as a teenager in 2016, Shah has been waiting for five years to be permanently resettled, and the uncertainty, coupled with a long-term health issue, caused him to fall into a depression, according to his fellow refugees.

A video made at the scene that circulates widely on Indonesian social media shows what happened next: Najafi and several other refugees tried to argue with Shah when he held his hands. The lighter jerked and burned his petrol-soaked clothes. The flames engulfed his upper body as Najafi leaned towards the Shah in a desperate attempt to help him before hitting him with the heat. Eventually, a security guard with fire extinguishers approached Shah and extinguished the fire.

When the flames subsided, the king’s arms and face were badly burned. He was reportedly taken across the street to a private hospital, but was transferred the same day by IOM to a government hospital in Medan, according to his friends who said the organization would not pay for his medical care.

Like many countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the subsequent 1967 Refugee Protocol, which allows permanent residency in the host country. This means that refugees are only allowed to stay temporarily while they wait to be resettled elsewhere, usually in countries such as the United States or Canada. And while they wait in Indonesia, they are subject to strict rules.

The regulations include, everyday activities such as ban on working, owning a car or motorcycle, travelling outside city limits or going to university. The IOM provides accommodation, usually in old hotels, and provides an allowance for food and essentials. Each adult refugee receives 1,250,000 Indonesian rupiah ($86) a month, and each child receives 500,000 Indonesian rupiah ($34).

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were more than 13,000 refugees in Indonesia in May 2021, and almost all Afghan refugees are Hazaras, a Persian-speaking ethnic group predominantly Shia Muslims.

But even as the number of refugees continues to grow – in 2020, the number of refugees worldwide increased to 20.7 million for the ninth consecutive year – it is becoming increasingly difficult to resettle permanently.

The coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse. The UNHCR found that 160 countries had closed their borders at some time during the pandemic in 2020, with 99 states making no exceptions for people seeking protection. Resettlement can take decades.

Meanwhile, having suffered third-degree burns over much of his upper body, Ahmad Shah is still in a serious condition in hospital, where his friends are trying to visit him in shifts to provide support.

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