Kennang Augustin Ferdinand has been waiting 13 years for a response from Macau authorities regarding his asylum application submitted in 2011 after escaping political persecution in Cameroon, he told Lusa.
Kennang Augustin Ferdinand spends his days in the library. Alone, at the back of the computer room, he reads news from home.
On the day he speaks to Lusa, he is wearing a green Cameroonian football jersey with a golden lion on his chest. “Even that is not going well in the country,” he says about the national team’s performance, which last week drew with Angola.
His involvement in the 1990s with the student movement Parliament at Yaoundé University, linked to the Cameroonian opposition, led this human rights activist, now in his 50s, to flee to Macau, a city he had never heard of, he now tells Lusa.
He arrived in 2011 with the help of a bishop friend who knew Jesuit priest Luis Ruiz Suárez, founder of Caritas Macau.The Catholic charity organisation then contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Hong Kong, which in turn presented the case to the Macau Refugee Affairs Commission.
This committee is responsible for “handling the processes for the recognition or loss of refugee status” and drafting a proposal for a decision. The final decision rests with the Chief Executive, the highest leader of the local government.
But it took 12 years before Kennang was received by the commission. This happened in 2023: “They asked why I couldn’t return to Cameroon, and I explained that I could be killed for political reasons, that I was accused, among other crimes, of rebellion and insurrection.”
From that meeting, he says, came hope. “I feel that after [almost] 14 years, they have begun processing the request,” he continues. He was also asked if he had any interest in going to another country.
Kennang mentioned Germany, where his siblings live, though he expressed a desire to remain in the territory and “offer what he knows to the community”: “I have been here so long, I know the traditions, habits, I studied Portuguese,” says the Cameroonian, who also speaks some Cantonese.
Lusa made several interview requests to the president of the Refugee Commission, Leong Weng Si, deputy prosecutor of the Public Prosecution Office, without success. A similar request to the UNHCR in Hong Kong went unanswered.
Lawyer José Abecasis handled a similar case in 2010. It involved an Indian citizen who sought protection in Macau but eventually “was defeated by exhaustion” and chose to leave the territory.
“He was stuck in limbo, not granted nor denied refugee status. This precarious hiatus, which by nature and by law should have been temporary, became a way of life, depending on a government subsistence allowance for the most basic needs,” says the Portuguese lawyer.
While waiting for a response, asylum seekers in Macau are prohibited from working or leaving the territory, being required to make monthly visits to the Migration Services.
The Social Welfare Bureau told Lusa that currently, two candidates for refugee status in Macau – one of them being Kennang – receive a monthly government allowance of 4,350 patacas (503 euros). They are also provided with accommodation and healthcare.
Asked if a 13-year wait for refugee status recognition is legal, Abecasis responds, “procedurally, it shouldn’t be.”
He explains that the maximum instruction period provided by law “is one year,” starting from the first interview with the applicant, which should occur “within five days after the application is submitted.” After the instruction period, “a decision proposal should be presented to the Chief Executive within 10 days.”
In this context, the lawyer considers, “a wait of more than a decade for a decision clearly disregards the deadlines established by the local law of the Legislative Assembly [local parliament], intended to ensure compliance in Macau with the norms of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, signed in Geneva in 1951, and the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted on January 31, 1967.”
Supporting Kennang Augustin Ferdinand since he landed in the region, the Secretary-General of Caritas Macau, Paul Pun Chi Meng, hopes “the case evaluation will be done soon.”
The meeting with the commission in 2023, says Pun, “is a positive sign.”
“This is an improvement compared to the past,” he emphasises.
On the occasion of World Refugee Day, marked on Thursday, and recalling that Macau once sheltered “many refugees” from mainland China, Vietnam, or Timor-Leste, Paul Pun calls on “the society of Macau to pay more attention to these people.”
“There are over 100 million refugees [worldwide] seeking help. If we support just one per million, that’s 100 refugees. Macau can share this task and show that we are also global citizens,” he concludes.
Since the law on the recognition and loss of refugee status was passed in 2004, refugee status has never been granted in Macau, according to UNHCR. This information was confirmed to Lusa by the Identification Services of the territory, which assured that it has never issued a refugee identity document.
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