Cameroonians have waited 13 years for clarity on their status – HojeMacau

For 13 years, Kenan Ferdinand has been waiting for the Macau authorities to decide on his application for refugee status, which he filed in 2011. The Lusa head told Lusa his story of the years he spent escaping the political persecution he was experiencing in Cameroon at the time.

Kenan Augustin Ferdinand told Lusa that he has been waiting for 13 years for the Macau authorities to respond to his asylum application, which he submitted in 2011, after fleeing political persecution by the Cameroonian regime. Every day he spends his days alone behind the computer room in the library, reading the news from home.

On the day he spoke to Lusa, he was wearing a green Cameroon football shirt with a golden lion on the chest. “It’s not going well in this country anymore,” he said of his team’s performance, which had just last week ended with a draw with Angola.

From the 1990s, his involvement in the Parliament of the University of Yaoundé Student Movement, which was linked to the Cameroonian opposition, led the human rights activist, now in his 50s, to flee to Macau, a city he had never heard of.

It reached a bishop friend who knew the founder of Caritas Macau, Jesuit Father Luis Ruiz Suárez, in 2011. The organization then contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Hong Kong, which in turn referred the case to the Macau Refugee Commission.

But it was not until 12 years later that Kennan was admitted by the commission. It happened in 2023: “They asked me why I could not return to Cameroon, I explained that I could be killed for political reasons, and I was accused of rebellion and insurgency, among other crimes”.

Willingness to stay

He said that from this meeting, hope was born. [quase] After 14 years, they started processing requests,” he continued. He said he was asked if he was interested in going to another country.

Kennan spoke from Germany, where his brother is, although he expressed his desire to stay and “give what he knows to the community”: “I’ve been here for a long time, I know the traditions, the habits, I learned Portuguese,” said the Cameroonian, who also speaks a little Cantonese.

Lusa made repeated interview requests to the chairman of the refugee committee commissioned by prosecutor Leung Wing-sze, but to no avail. Similar requests to the Hong Kong Refugee Office were not answered.

In 2010, lawyer José Abecasis took on a similar case, an Indian citizen who sought protection in Macau but eventually left because he was “exhausted”.

“He is trapped in limbo, as he has neither been granted refugee status nor rejected. This precarious interruption, which should be temporary in nature and legally, ends up becoming a way of life, dependent on government survival support to meet the most basic needs”, said the Portuguese lawyer.

While awaiting a response, asylum seekers in Macau are prohibited from working or leaving the region and are required to visit immigration services monthly.

The Institute for Social Action said that currently there are two refugee status candidates in Macau – one of them is Kenan – who receive a government subsidy of 4,350 patacas per month. They are also guaranteed accommodation and medical care.

When asked whether the 13-year wait for refugee status to be recognized was legal, Abecassis replied, “In a procedural sense, it should not be.”

It explains that the maximum period of investigation prescribed by law is “one year”, starting from the first interview with the applicant, which must be carried out “within five days of submitting the request”. After the end of the indication period, “a proposal for a decision must be submitted to the head of the administration within 10 days”.

In this sense, the lawyer believes that “waiting for a decision for more than ten years would constitute a clear disregard of the deadlines set by the local law of the Legislative Assembly, which is intended to ensure” in Macau “compliance 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”.

Paulo Pun, secretary general of Caritas Macau, which supports Kenan Augustin Ferdinand, hopes that “the evaluation of the case will take place as soon as possible”. Pun said that the meeting with the committee in 2023 “is a positive sign”. “Compared to the past, this is an improvement”, he stressed.