New Delhi
26 February 2007
Eman Mohammed Yusuf, her two children and about 50 other
Palestinian men, women and children, who fled Iraq to escape the marauding Mahdi
Army, on Monday gathered outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi. Some of them have spent a year in India while
others arrived a few months ago but all of them sought better living conditions.
Eman Mohammed and her husband did not have the money to flee to freedom with their
four children. So her husband decided to stay in Baghdad with their two children, a boy
and a girl. Her travails had just begun. The Iraqi Kurd "dealer" promised to take them to
Australia but dumped them in India. "We don't have the money to bring them [here]," she
sobbed inconsolably.
Like Eman, life in India has been tough without adequate financial assistance or medical
attention for the 50-odd Palestinians who held a sit-in outside the UNHCR office. Nohad
Ibrahim decided to flee Iraq after a militia kidnapped her son Mohammad (10). "They
threatened to kill him if I did'nt pay money," she recalled. Nohad sold her belongings to
secure her son's release, and soon joined the othre fleeing Iraq.
When contacted, a UNHCR official told this newspaper that the UNHCR in India has
recognised 88 Palestinians as "refugees" and is paying financial assistance to 26 of
them while 76 are "asylum seekers". The UNHCR pays Rs 2,245 per principal applicant
and Rs 750 for a minor dependant subject to a maximum of seven minor dependants.
"On Wednesday we have called them ... they have nominated four men and a woman ...
to discuss outstanding issues. Paying financial assistance to singles is under review,"
the official said. A shorter determination procedure as stipulated under Article 1(d)(ii) of
the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees would be applicable in their case as
they were Palestinian "refugees" living in Iraq, the UNHCR official added.
A six-year-old boy Abdallah has received splinter wounds on his palm and needs urgent
medical attention. "He will suffer if we don't take him to a proper doctor," his mother
cried. Another boy, nine-year-old Hamza, says he misses school. This was the first time
most of these woman had stepped foot abroad. Basama Aqeel remembers being taken to
Syria and then to Abu Dhabi before she arrived in India. Ask her why India and she
retorts: "We were told Indians love Palestinians."
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