The Christians Stranded in Thailand

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Thousands of Christian refugees who have fled religious violence in Pakistan are stranded in Thailand. They travel there because of cheap tourist visas but quickly get caught in a tangle of asylum bureaucracy which can mean waiting years to move on to a third country. It happens because Thailand does not offer asylum to refugees, but passes them on to the UNCHR for processing; but the UN is overwhelmed, leaving many to suffer poverty and deprivation while they await news of their cases.

In some cases men, women and children are rounded up by the Thai authorities and incarcerated in grim detention centres or even imprisoned.

For Assignment, the BBC’s Chris Rogers reports from the backstreets of Bangkok where many of the refugees are in hiding and goes undercover to expose the treatment of these people in Thailand’s detention system.

Produced by Michael Gallagher

(Photo: Illegal immigrants in Thailand find themselves in detention)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a BBC podcast.
0:02.3	You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use
0:04.9	at BBCworldservice. It's a Sunday in Bangkok and about a hundred worshippers have gathered to
0:25.5	celebrate their faith. Men, women, children crammed into one room, donated by a sympathetic hotel owner, taking
0:36.4	comfort from their community.
0:38.9	As they pray though, tears stream down their faces. It's not just faith that has brought these people together,
0:45.0	it's a shared experience, a brutal and disturbing one.
0:49.0	They're still so scared that all the interviewees in this program have asked for their names to be changed.
0:58.0	Listen to the words of the prayer leader, He goes by the name of Pastor Joshua.
1:05.0	Surely I do not have the words to repeat what happened.
1:11.0	When my sister was burnt alive only because she said the word God.
1:15.3	They hate so much the word God.
1:18.6	She was burnt for this reason alone that she said the word God. She was my sister.
1:30.0	In this world I only had two close companions.
1:36.1	One was my sister and one was my friend. When my sister was murdered,
1:41.1	when she was burnt alive, my friend was also killed because he tried to save me.
1:47.6	And my sister was burnt alive just because she spoke the word God.
1:51.6	And I'm going to be here. God. Pastor Joshua is from Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and he's a Christian.
2:08.0	His experiences are far from uncommon in his homeland, where Islamists seek to convert or destroy devotees of other faiths.
2:17.4	The pastor has now fled to escape the persecution.
2:21.0	Along with thousands of other Pakistani Christians Christians he's come to Thailand.
2:25.0	For those who can afford it, it's one of the few places they can get to easily.
	...

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