Memoar – Kian (EN)

Hello. I’m 20 years old right now and I’m from Iran I was born in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and currently, I live in Makassar.

I left Iran with my family when I was 13 years old for the problem that my family was facing in Iran we had to leave. So, we left Iran in hurry with my family to find a safe place. We were told by UNHCR that we were gonna stay here in Indonesia for a relatively short period of time, but it has been almost eight years since that day.  

Indonesian people are very friendly and welcoming, and they always greet you warmly one very good point about them is that they always smile on their faces, they greet you with smile. But one of the things that I heard and witnessed alone was that refugees tend to hide their nationality and identity from people. When for example when they ask you where you are from, they stopped saying where they’re from, they’re from somewhere else. And that is especially because the refugees are afraid of people’s misjudgment and misconceptions about their country of origin and their status as asylum seekers or refugees.

Personally, I have been treated differently by people when I’m known to them as a refugee or as a tourist. For instance, when I go outside and people come up to me and they say where are you from and what are you doing here there are two things that could happen if I say I’m here for a vacation they treat me in a good way as a tourist but If I say that I’m a refugee they instantly change their behavior and how they look at me which is not a very good experience someone could endure or experience. I cannot blame people for how they react to this answer because it’s not their fault and I know it’s because they have not been given proper education on how they should respond to the person who is a refugee. I mean they have not been socialized with refugees and asylum seekers that are living in urban areas.

Talking about the misconception of people towards refugees. Something that really affected me before is that people think that we refugees came to another world and we don’t know anything, which is totally incorrect. Sometimes it would be vice versa. Even though people who are in charge of refugees (management), had to handle refugees, sometimes they act like that like we don’t know how to use stuff, we don’t know anything which really upset me especially.  

Another misconception that I encountered was that people especially local people sometimes think that we as refugees come here to steal their jobs, which is totally incorrect because we don’t even have the right to work in Indonesia. And I think it’s the matter that needs to be socialized with the people by their related organizations so that the people wouldn’t feel like that about us. One more misconception is that worldwide that they think that refugees don’t have any skills, talents, or any educations which are also wrong because most of them had a very good job. Some of them were doctors, engineers, or teachers. Also, some skilled jobs like tailors, carpenters, and farmers. But because they were forced to leave their country, they are not able to use their talents and skills in their jobs.

Human beings are not so different from each other they all have the same human race, they all are the same, and refugees are not something different from other humans. They are also human beings, they don’t look different from other humans, they don’t have any horns whatsoever they are just like any other normal human being. The only difference is that refugee is the people who had to leave their country because of the problem that they were facing in their home country, which doesn’t actually concern them.