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| Hong Kong asylum seekers rap to tell their stories |
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Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 22-Aug-2008 21:19 hrs |
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| Asylum-seekers featured on the independently released Naked Backs album pose in Hong Kong in July 2008. The album describes the struggle to survive in the wealthy financial hub, where a UN agency accepts applications for asylum, and the government frequently jails people who stay to wait for a decision from the UN. |
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There was a seventeen-day period during Abhiman's nearly two years of detention in a Hong Kong jail when he didn't get a shower and hope of a better future was fading fast.. His 'crime' was to flee his native Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands have died since separatist Tamil rebels started a campaign in 1972 to carve out an independent homeland, and seek asylum under Hong Kong's bright lights.. Dixon, from Ghana's northern Yendi district, had been a livestock trader before political violence drove him off his ancestral land in 2004, and eventually to a city he knew little about and never imagined he would come to.. Abhiman and Dixon have both applied for political asylum with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) here -- but are in legal limbo, as they face a long wait for a response to their claims and are barred from working in the meantime.. Keen to vent their frustrations, they have chosen an unusual avenue of expression -- rap music.. The duo are featured on the "Naked Backs" album, which describes the struggle to survive in Hong Kong, where the authorities frequently jail asylum seekers waiting for the United Nations to address their claims.. "We are stuck in the land of HK, in the land where we cannot make our future," Dixon declares on the opening track of the album, which has been independently released here.. Abhiman, 26, and Dixon, 30, both first-time rappers, used pseudonyms when they talked to AFP, the same aliases they use on the CD, to protect their identities while they wait for decisions on their asylum claims.. "I was in jail for two years," said Abhiman, a former Buddhist monk who was imprisoned here in August 2005.. "Some people are there for three years. They stay a long time because immigration says you have overstayed (your visa). Overstayers are big criminals here in Hong Kong," he told AFP.. The UN office processes asylum applications here, but there is no coordination with the Hong Kong government to address the time lag between a typical claim and the length of a valid visa, meaning many overstay their welcome -- and end up in jail.. "One of the problems is that it (the jail term) is open-ended and there is no guidance as to why someone has been detained," said Mark Daly, a Canadian lawyer practising in Hong Kong who has championed the causes of asylum-seekers.. Hong Kong is not a signatory of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which, experts say, would obligate the government to protect the basic rights of asylum seekers.. "We have a policy of not granting asylum," a spokesman for the city's security bureau told AFP, explaining that the city feared its wealth and liberal visa regime would make it vulnerable to abusers.. That leaves Dixon, Abhiman and the other performers on the "Naked Backs" album -- a project initiated and funded by volunteers from a Hong Kong school and the Christian Action asylum seeker support group -- in total limbo.. "The CD project started off with traditional songs in mind, with songs about freedom and human rights," said Jonathan Harland, manager of Christian Action.. But the participants had other ideas.. "We decided to write something about our own stories. Life in Hong Kong, our situation, this is what I did," said Dixon, who receives an accommodation rental allowance while his claim is being processed.. "I went to immigration to try to organise my situation concerning my UNHCR application. But they didn't give me a chance, so I had to become an overstayer," he said, adding that he slept at the iconic Star Ferry pier for six to eight months, dodging police raids and sheltering in cardboard boxes.. Abhiman said writing the lyrics for the album came easily.. "I had nothing to do, yeah, so I tried to write the rap. So I wanted to write some songs about my experience. So the words were just coming out and coming out," he said.. "Life in Hong Kong is very difficult because we are alone, we don't know anybody. We can't work. We don't have our own freedom. We are like prisoners, even outside jail." — AFP
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