It is 20 degrees, and opposite is the Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Center, an office building concealing thousands of undocumented migrants. They will only be released by relocation to a third country, a lengthy process. An undocumented migrant and former detainee himself, RK relies upon volunteers to relay messages of hope on his behalf. An exact breakdown of the origins of refugee communities in Thailand is not available. But compared with Europe, Thailand is in seen as being in easier reach and more hospitable among Pakistani, Somali, Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian migrants and refugees β all of whom flock to the Asian country.
These were among the considerations that drew RK to the city. Three years earlier, when he was 16 years old, he fled Mogadishu, the Somali capital, after his father was killed in an al-Shabab car bomb attack. But misinformation and false hope are the currencies that sustain the smuggling industry, with the reality on the ground remaining far bleaker.
Consequently, all undocumented migrants remain at the mercy of immigration officials who regularly arrest and incarcerate anyone unable to produce valid visas. As a result, they face crippling government-imposed restrictions on access to healthcare and education. Most debilitating is the inability to earn money legally. This consigns them to a life subsisting on irregular handouts from increasingly stretched refugee support networks.
With the threat of arrest and detention constantly looming, avoiding unwanted attention from authorities is the foremost daily consideration. Most spend long days confined to crowded and squalid apartments. He arrived in Bangkok alone at the age He shares a single-room apartment with four other Somali men, none of whom are older than 20 and all are also members of minority clans in Somalia at risk of violence.
The men estimate that there are seven other apartments in the building housing people of African and Middle Eastern origin living in similar circumstances. With access heavily restricted, accounts of abysmal conditions are known only from the testimonies of former detainees released on a now-defunct bail system that was operated at the discretion of immigration officials until mid I would sleep on the concrete floor and only saw the sun every three days.
