Barat Ali Batoor: My desperate journey with a human smuggler

62,396 views ・ 2015-04-10

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I am a Hazara,
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and the homeland of my people is Afghanistan.
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Like hundreds of thousands of other Hazara kids,
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I was born in exile.
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The ongoing persecution and operation against the Hazaras
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forced my parents to leave Afghanistan.
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This persecution has had a long history going back to the late 1800s,
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and the rule of King Abdur Rahman.
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He killed 63 percent of the Hazara population.
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He built minarets with their heads.
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Many Hazaras were sold into slavery,
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and many others fled the country for neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
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My parents also fled to Pakistan,
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and settled in Quetta, where I was born.
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After the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers,
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I got a chance to go to Afghanistan
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for the first time, with foreign journalists.
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I was only 18, and I got a job working as an interpreter.
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After four years,
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I felt it was safe enough to move to Afghanistan permanently,
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and I was working there as a documentary photographer,
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and I worked on many stories.
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One of the most important stories that I did
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was the dancing boys of Afghanistan.
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It is a tragic story about an appalling tradition.
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It involves young kids dancing for warlords
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and powerful men in the society.
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These boys are often abducted or bought from their poor parents,
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and they are put to work as sex slaves.
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This is Shukur.
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He was kidnapped from Kabul by a warlord.
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He was taken to another province,
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where he was forced to work as a sex slave for the warlord and his friends.
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When this story was published in the Washington Post,
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I started receiving death threats,
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and I was forced to leave Afghanistan,
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as my parents were.
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Along with my family, I returned back to Quetta.
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The situation in Quetta had changed dramatically since I left in 2005.
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Once a peaceful haven for the Hazaras,
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it had now turned into the most dangerous city in Pakistan.
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Hazaras are confined into two small areas,
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and they are marginalized socially, educationally, and financially.
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This is Nadir.
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I had known him since my childhood.
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He was injured when his van was ambushed by terrorists in Quetta.
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He later died of his injuries.
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Around 1,600 Hazara members
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had been killed in various attacks,
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and around 3,000 of them were injured,
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and many of them permanently disabled.
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The attacks on the Hazara community would only get worse,
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so it was not surprising that many wanted to flee.
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After Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan,
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Australia is home to the fourth largest population of Hazaras in the world.
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When it came time to leave Pakistan,
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Australia seemed the obvious choice.
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Financially, only one of us could leave,
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and it was decided that I would go,
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in the hope that if I arrived at my destination safely,
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I could work to get the rest of my family to join me later.
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We all knew about the risks,
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and how terrifying the journey is,
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and I met many people who lost loved ones at sea.
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It was a desperate decision to take, to leave everything behind,
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and no one makes this decision easily.
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If I had been able to simply fly to Australia,
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it would have taken me less than 24 hours.
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But getting a visa was impossible.
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My journey was much longer,
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much more complicated,
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and certainly more dangerous,
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traveling to Thailand by air,
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and then by road and boat to Malaysia and into Indonesia,
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paying people and smugglers all the way
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and spending a lot of time hiding
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and a lot of time in fear of being caught.
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In Indonesia, I joined a group of seven asylum seekers.
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We all shared a bedroom
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in a town outside of Jakarta called Bogor.
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After spending a week in Bogor,
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three of my roommates left for the perilous journey,
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and we got the news two days later
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that a distressed boat sank in the sea en route to Christmas Island.
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We found out that our three roommates -- Nawroz, Jaffar and Shabbir --
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were also among those.
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Only Jaffar was rescued.
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Shabbir and Nawroz were never seen again.
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It made me think,
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am I doing the right thing?
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I concluded I really had no other choice but to go on.
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A few weeks later, we got the call from the people smuggler
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to alert us that the boat is ready for us to commence our sea journey.
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Taken in the night towards the main vessel
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on a motorboat,
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we boarded an old fishing boat that was already overloaded.
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There were 93 of us,
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and we were all below deck.
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No one was allowed up on the top.
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We all paid 6,000 dollars each
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for this part of the trip.
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The first night and day went smoothly,
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but by the second night, the weather turned.
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Waves tossed the boat around, and the timbers groaned.
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People below deck were crying, praying, recalling their loved ones.
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They were screaming.
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It was a terrible moment.
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It was like a scene from doomsday,
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or maybe like one of those scenes from those Hollywood movies
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that shows that everything is breaking apart
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and the world is just ending.
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It was happening to us for real.
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We didn't have any hope.
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Our boat was floating like a matchbox on the water
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without any control.
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The waves were much higher than our boat,
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and the water poured in faster than the motor pumps could take it out.
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We all lost hope.
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We thought, this is the end.
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We were watching our deaths,
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and I was documenting it.
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The captain told us
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that we are not going to make it,
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we have to turn back the boat.
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We went on the deck
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and turned our torches on and off
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to attract the attention of any passing boat.
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We kept trying to attract their attention by waving our life jackets and whistling.
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Eventually, we made it to a small island.
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Our boat crashing onto the rocks,
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I slipped into the water
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and destroyed my camera, whatever I had documented.
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But luckily, the memory card survived.
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It was a thick forest.
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We all split up into many groups as we argued over what to do next.
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We were all scared and confused.
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Then, after spending the night on the beach,
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we found a jetty and coconuts.
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We hailed a boat from a nearby resort,
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and then were quickly handed over to Indonesian water police.
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At Serang Detention Center,
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an immigration officer came and furtively strip-searched us.
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He took our mobile, my $300 cash,
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our shoes that we should not be able to escape,
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but we kept watching the guards, checking their movements,
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and around 4 a.m. when they sat around a fire,
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we removed two glass layers from an outside facing window
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and slipped through.
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We climbed a tree next to an outer wall that was topped with the shards of glass.
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We put the pillow on that
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and wrapped our forearms with bedsheets
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and climbed the wall,
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and we ran away with bare feet.
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I was free,
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with an uncertain future,
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no money.
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The only thing I had was the memory card with the pictures and footage.
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When my documentary was aired on SBS Dateline,
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many of my friends came to know about my situation,
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and they tried to help me.
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They did not allow me to take any other boat to risk my life.
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I also decided to stay in Indonesia and process my case through UNHCR,
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but I was really afraid that I would end up in Indonesia
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for many years doing nothing and unable to work,
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like every other asylum seeker.
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But it had happened to be a little bit different with me.
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I was lucky.
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My contacts worked to expedite my case through UNHCR,
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and I got resettled in Australia in May 2013.
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Not every asylum seeker is lucky like me.
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It is really difficult to live a life with an uncertain fate, in limbo.
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The issue of asylum seekers in Australia
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has been so extremely politicized
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that it has lost its human face.
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The asylum seekers have been demonized and then presented to the people.
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I hope my story and the story of other Hazaras
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could shed some light to show the people
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how these people are suffering in their countries of origin,
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and how they suffer,
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why they risk their lives to seek asylum.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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