Morwan Mohammad walks down an old hotel hallway on the island of Batam in northwest Indonesia before entering a six-square-meter room that has been home to him and his growing family for the past eight years.
Mohammad, who fled the war in Sudan, is one of hundreds of refugees living in communal accommodation on the island while awaiting resettlement in a third country.
Hotel Kolekta, a former tourist hotel, was converted in 2015 into a temporary shelter that now hosts 228 refugees from conflict-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere. The island, south of Singapore, has a population of 1.2 million people.
Indonesia, despite having a long history of accepting refugees, is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the government does not allow refugees and asylum seekers to work.
Many fled to Indonesia as a starting point in hopes of eventually reaching Australia by boat, but are now stuck in what seems like endless limbo.
Mohammad and his wife arrived in Jakarta nine years ago, after traveling from their hometown of Nyala to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then to the sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago, where their first stop was the government agency’s office. UN refugees in the capital.
“We didn’t know where to go – we were just looking for a safe place to live. The most important thing was to get out of Sudan to avoid war,” he said.
They went to Batam in 2016, believing it would be easier to travel from there to a third country for resettlement.
Mohammad’s three children were born in Indonesia and he does not know where his family will eventually settle. He says he wants to have a normal life, working and earning money so he can support himself without depending on help from others.
“We left our country, our family. We miss our family members. But life here is also very difficult for us because, for eight years, we haven’t worked, we haven’t done good activities. Just sleep, wake up, eat, repeat,” he said.
Hotel Kolekta is managed by the Tanjungpinang Central Immigration Detention Center on nearby Bintan Island. This three-story detention center, with barred windows and faded paint, is home to dozens of detainees who face equally uncertain futures, including whether they will ever return to their home countries, but in conditions that more closely resemble a prison.
Two Palestinian men have languished there for more than a year, unable to return home due to the war in Gaza. Four fishermen from Myanmar are stranded because they cannot afford to continue their journey.
Detainees at the detention center typically violated Indonesia’s immigration regulations, while those living at Hotel Kolekta and other communal accommodation entered the country legally in search of safe haven.
The UNHCR office in Indonesia says that almost a third of the 12,295 people registered with the organization are children who have limited access to education and health services.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
