Saturday, March 14, 2009

Life As A failed Asylum Seeker

Ahmed (not his real name) has thick, black hair swept back and a jacket that looks too thin in the biting cold of the late afternoon.Arriving from Turkey, he has been in Denmark for a long time, but doesn't want to say how long.

His father was a member of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK), a group fighting to create a separate Kurdish homeland. But he was killed by Turkish army special forces. Ahmed was then served his conscription papers for the Turkish army, but he didn't want anything to do with the people who had killed his father.

Worried he too might be killed, Ahmed fled, first to Germany, then on to Denmark. He applied for asylum and waited three years for a decision. His lawyer argued his life was at risk because of his family connections and that he simply couldn't return. The Danish panel listened carefully, and then ruled against him. At the asylum centre, he waited and wondered when they would come to deport him.At that point, Ahmed decided he could not let that happen, and so he disappeared. He walked out of the camp and became a "ghost".

Read More At Al Jazeera

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