‘I can’t go home’: Afghans in Hong Kong watch and worry as Taliban sweeps into power
- Chaos of US withdrawal moves Hongkongers to learn more, raise funds for NGO helping in Afghanistan
- Afghans in Hong Kong don’t believe Islamist militia group has moderated its views, expect return of harsh restrictions for girls, women
Sitara left Afghanistan for Hong Kong on August 8, just a week before the Taliban overran the capital, Kabul.
The University of Hong Kong student had returned to the city for two months to see her family, still grieving over the death of her older brother last year in an attack when his car was stolen. He left a wife and two young daughters.
She was in her provincial hometown when fierce fighting broke out in July between the Afghan army and the Taliban.
As the sound of gunshots and rockets filled the air one day, her mother ushered everyone into the basement for safety, taking in their neighbour’s family as well.
“My whole family was scared,” recalls Sitara, who is in her early twenties. “Many of my friends said the Taliban were coming. We didn’t know what would happen.”
She got out of Afghanistan before the Taliban took control and thousands of people tried to flee the country. Her family remains there.
“I don‘t watch the news, because it really makes me sad,” says Sitara, who does not know when she will see her family again.
Although there are few Afghans living in Hong Kong, the situation in Afghanistan has moved many in the city to raise funds for refugees and others affected by the crisis.
Many were surprised by the speed with which the Islamist militia group regained control, and the announcement of its new government is imminent.
Dressed in black with a bright scarf covering her hair, Sitara tells the Post she fears for women and those from ethnic minority groups, who have been persecuted in the past.
She is a member of the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Hazara. The community, mostly Shia Muslims, has faced some of the most violent assaults at the hands of the Taliban and the country’s majority Pashtun ethnic group, who practise Sunni Islam.
While the Taliban has said it will grant amnesty to all and recognise the rights of women “within the bounds of Islamic law”, Sitara does not believe the group has become more moderate than in the past, when it placed harsh restrictions on girls and women.
05:44
Afghan student in Hong Kong fears for family caught up in ‘heartbreaking’ crisis back home
“They are the same Taliban, because they still believe in the extreme version of sharia law and Islam, and they want to exercise that. I think the Taliban we are seeing in the media are not the same Taliban who are out on the streets,” she says.
Daily calls with her family have become less frequent as the internet service has deteriorated over the past couple of weeks. When she does get through, she tells them to stay indoors as much as possible.
Her parents have decided to stay put, as the cost of leaving to start a new life in neighbouring Pakistan or Iran is too high.
“My dad said, ‘Let’s not make a decision that puts our lives at risk. We do not want to starve in another country’,” she says, recalling one of their conversations.
Her younger brother is in Grade 4 at school, but says there are now no girls in his class. Her mother leaves home only to buy groceries, and rarely sees women in the streets these days.
Her mother has even considered burning Sitara’s school certificates and English-language books, in case the house is searched and the evidence of their daughter’s education is used as an excuse to harm the family.
Sitara did so well in school that a teacher with global connections suggested she apply to HKU. She left home with her parents’ blessing, arriving in Hong Kong in 2018.
With a year until she completes her degree, she does not know what lies ahead, and fears what might await her if she returns home.
“I cannot say right now what will happen. I don’t think I can go back, but if I go, there is a possibility that I will be killed or anything could happen to me.”
Angry with the US and Afghanistan’s political leaders for what she believes is their betrayal of the Afghan people, Sitara hopes the international community and United Nations will help ensure there are no human rights abuses under the new regime.
“People just want to have their basic needs met and basic human rights,” she says.
Social worker Jeffrey Andrews estimates there are fewer than 100 Afghans living in Hong Kong, but they are not clustered within a single area, as they are from different ethnic backgrounds.
Eight Afghan arrivals have been granted refugee status by the UN in Hong Kong since 2009.
Andrews says one Afghan who arrived in 2019 and claimed to be a victim of torture was officially recognised as a refugee this week. The case shows that the Hong Kong government is taking the situation seriously, he adds, as such arrivals usually wait years for their claims to be concluded.
He knows of at least two others with cases pending.
Hong Kong does not treat people fleeing their home countries as “asylum seekers” or “refugees”, but rather as undocumented immigrants, as the city is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.
However, those who arrive can file a “non-refoulement” claim, and they are then assessed to decide if they should be repatriated or allowed to remain, pending formal refugee claims handled by the UN.
The acceptance rate is less than 1 per cent, and those who succeed must then wait to be resettled in another country.
Afghan Mirwais* was officially recognised as a refugee in 2019 and is now waiting to be resettled.
His parents ran a successful business in Afghanistan, and at 14, he knew the Koran from memory. The Taliban wanted to recruit him, and when he refused, he was kidnapped and tortured.
His injuries kept him in hospital for six months. When he recovered, his family moved to neighbouring Pakistan, only for the teen to be targeted again in an attempted kidnapping that he escaped.
His parents then decided to send him to Hong Kong. He arrived in 2018 to start his legal journey to refugee status. His three older brothers went from Pakistan to France, where they are now refugees.
Now in his 20s, Mirwais worries for his parents and three teenage sisters in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban arrived in Kabul, his parents and sisters were among those camped out at the airport desperate to catch a flight out. But as the final aircraft left the country this week, their hopes of leaving faded.
Mirwais was frantic when a suicide bombing at the airport on August 28 left almost 200 people dead, including US military personnel. His brothers in France eventually told him their parents and sisters were safe.
Tall and neatly dressed, Mirwais, who is in his 20s, says he wakes up every day and checks the news, but feels helpless.
He is especially worried for his sisters and what might happen to them under the Taliban regime, and – like Sitara – does not believe the group has become less extreme.
“They have bombed schools and hospitals. How can we believe them?” he asked.
When he arrived in Hong Kong, Mirwais could not speak English. But he has picked up the language by attending classes at Christian Action, a charity helping refugees and members of ethnic minority communities.
While waiting to be resettled in another country by the UN refugee agency, he lives on his own in the New Territories, relying on basic government support and donations from the charity.
“I have been here three years,” he says. “Everyone knows my country has a problem. Why am I waiting? It is very slow.”
Mirwais hopes to go to Canada, but does not know if that will happen, or when he will be resettled.
“I hope to see my mother and father again. I want a good life. I don’t want to be afraid for them. I want a normal life and freedom,” he says.
Andrews, the social worker, says he has been surprised by the interest Hongkongers have shown for the plight of Afghans.
A manager with Christian Action, he says the group has received numerous calls over the past few weeks from people wanting to donate money or show their support.
“Maybe 10 years ago, nobody would have cared,” says Andrews, an ethnic Indian and the city’s first member of a minority group to become a social worker.
Among the concerned Hongkongers are Sonya Fock Man-wai, 36, and her boyfriend Fred Lam-fai, 40, who run a travel company and co-own a restaurant in Sham Shui Po.
In 2016, Lam went on holiday to Iran and, through a non-governmental organisation, met a number of Afghan refugees there. Fock went a year later and met them too, and the couple kept in contact with their Afghan friends.
They organised an event that was held online and at a Kowloon bookshop on August 25 to tell Hongkongers about Afghanistan, featuring two speakers who had lived in the country. They were shocked when more than 150 registered to attend in just a matter of hours.
“A lot of Hong Kong people are interested in finding out more about Afghanistan, but there isn’t any way except through the media,” Lam says.
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Women protest in Afghanistan for female representation in Taliban’s new cabinet
The event, attended by locals, raised almost HK$16,000 for PARSA, an NGO which works with the Afghan Red Crescent and the Afghan Scouts.
The couple hope to hold more fundraising activities.
Lam says: “We know that when a country is in trouble, outside support is not only helpful, but also encouraging for people there to know that others in the world care about them.”
Denise Lin Lee-lee, 27, who works for an NGO that helps vulnerable young women, attended the talk after watching the news about Afghanistan on TV.
“I wanted to know more. The social movement in Hong Kong made me realise that freedom is really important, whether it is freedom of speech or academic freedom, so I wanted to spend more time educating myself,” she says.
One of the speakers was American Jennifer Moberg Pforte, 41, who taught music in Kabul for two years from 2014. It was where she met her husband, Alexander Pforte, who was working there for the Catholic charity Caritas.
Moberg Pforte left her job running a music school in Hong Kong to teach at the co-educational Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which was founded in 2010. The Taliban had previously banned the teaching of music.
“For some kids, learning how to play the violin or the recorder or the cello, it was the first music they had ever heard in their life,” she recalls.
The school orchestra went on to tour the US and played at the World Economic Forum.
Afghanistan ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ looms after Taliban victory
Moberg Pforte, who now works at Christian Action, could not hold back her tears as she recounted how former students and colleagues told her the school has fallen silent.
“It feels like something’s dying,” she says.
She does not know what will happen to art in the country, but is doubtful girls will be allowed to return to the school. And she, too, does not believe the Taliban has become moderate.
“They are the ones who were trying to blow us up … They attacked my school because the children play music,” she says.
“I expect that musicians in Afghanistan will burn their instruments. They’ll change professions, they’ll flee the country.”
*Name changed at the interviewee’s request.
