HS Culture 28.10.2003 - Asylum-seekers speak out in writing

By Minttu Mikkonen

Ahmad Razai, 13, arrived in Finland from Afghanistan in 1999 after a long and difficult journey. A smuggler brought Ahmad and his older sister, who was then 17 years old, to Finland via Russia.

At home in Kabul the Taleban had killed the family's father and brought his decapitated body home.

"I got a big shock and a bad stutter. I saw the event with my own eyes. I still stutter. It was the worst day of my life", Razai writes in an essay that won third prize in the "Asylum-Seeker in Finland" writing competition arranged by the Refugee Advice Centre.

Ahmad Razai writes

about how, at the age of nine, he heard about Santa Claus for the first time in Finland. He wrote to Santa and asked him to bring his mother from Afghanistan to Finland.

His mother finally got to Finland in 2002. In the same year the family, which also includes an older brother, got a residence permit. However, one older sister and a grandmother, as well as other relatives, are still in Afghanistan.

Ahmad Razai, who is in the seventh grade in school, hopes to study pharmacology when he graduates, because he wants to follow in the footsteps of his pharmacist father. The open and pleasant young man likes to read fantasy and adventure books, write stories, sing, and play the piano.

"I wanted to tell people what has happened to me in life, so that they would know how I feel - so that I would not be bullied, and that people would not constantly ask me why I am in Finland", Razai explains in fluent Finnish.

Writing also eases

the pain that the memories still bring to him.

By arranging the essay competition, the Refugee Advice Centre wanted, for once, to give asylum-seekers a voice, and an opportunity to tell their stories.

The lawyers who work for the organisation, which provides refugees and asylum-seekers with legal assistance and other aid, have noted that most asylum-seekers never get the opportunity to tell about their experiences, because officials lack the will or the time to listen.

Last year 3,443 asylum-seekers came to Finland, and 70% of the applications were rejected. The wait for a decision often takes more than two years.

Kirsi Hytinantti, a senior lawyer

at the Refugee Advice Centre, says that most of the decisions are made without the decision-maker ever meeting the applicant.

Decisions are therefore based purely on how the country of origin is classified, and on what an official has written in the record of the meeting.

The stories of the asylum-seekers reveal that the waiting - the uncertainty of the future - is the most painful of all.

"Asylum is a place where the past has been crossed out, the future is unknown, and the present simply does not exist. As long as you don't have a decision in your matter, you are constantly accompanied by two emotions: pain and fear", writes one of the participants in the competition.

It is not always possible

to write about painful experiences. Many of the 54 entries in the contest were by writers who chose a pseudonym.

Usually the reason for this is the incomplete asylum application process. This is the case with the winner of the first prize, Andrei, an asylum-seeker from Russia.

Andrei has lived in a refugee reception centre in Finland for more than two years. His application has been rejected already twice, and he does not have much faith in the future.

For reasons of safety Andrei cannot talk about why he was persecuted in Russia. He says that he is a pedagogue.

"I am constantly afraid that the police will come and say that I am to be deported", Andrei says in anguish.

I will not go back

to Russia. I will do everything to keep that from happening."

The young man, who probably looks older than his years, writes about the weeks he spent in a state teetering between dream and reality, while hiding from his persecutors in a cellar:

"I didn't care about anything. I crossed myself out, recognising my complete hopelessness, and gave myself to the whims of bitter fate. I began to observe my slow death as if I were an outside observer, as completely indifferent as a prisoner condemned to death."

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.10.2003

The results of the essay competition are to be compiled into a book scheduled for publication before Christmas.