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TRANSCRIPT:
"Wherever you see the police, wherever you see the army, instead of seeing security, safety - instead you run."
"If you didn't say your actual identity you can live there so my dad had to pay money."
Hiding, running, and dealing with trauma.
These are just some of the issues stateless people have to face in the lives when trying to find a home and safety.
So what does this look like?
When can you feel like you finally belong somewhere?
In this episode of Belonging Nowhere we try and answer that question...and explore some of the diverse diaspora of stateless people.
We begin in the western suburbs of Sydney, in Liverpool, where hundreds of Banyamulenge community members from across the country have gathered.
The Banyamulenge people are a minority ethnic group from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Their nationality has been disputed and they are usually described as stateless people from South Kivu.
SBS NEWS: "The assailant struck with deadly force. Armed with guns and machetes, they shot and hacked dozens of refugees to death then torched their homes, the Gatumba camp had been a sanctuary."
Two decades ago there was a massacre at a refugee camp in Burundi.
More than 150 people were killed on August 13, 2004, and rights group Human Rights Watch reported that many were Banyamulenge.
SBS WORLD NEWS LEE LIN CHIN: At least 180 Tutsi refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been massacred in a United Nations refugee camp in Neighbouring Burundi.
In 2024 the community commemorated its 20th year anniversary.
Organisers hand out candles, and people shake hands and hug as they greet each other for a special ceremony.
Claude Muco is a community advocate.
He says when the D-R-C's borders were first established, those who were Banyamulenge became Congolese.
But he explains the Congolese community didn't accept people like his minority group, and the community was isolated.
"Until now, there is (still) no schools, there is no running water, there is no electricity. So they live a kind of bush life with no single right in Congo - you don't have right to vote, you don't have access to education, to healthcare, you know, all those benefits for any other citizenship."
South Kivu is where Claude Muco was born, and where some of his relatives still are.
"I really remember those moments where we used to to run, wherever you see the police, wherever you see the army, instead of seeing the security, the safety, instead you run."
So why are Banyamulenge people treated this way?
Delphin Ntanyoma is a visiting researcher at the University of Leeds in the UK, who is also part of the Banyamulenge.
He says they are a Tutsi ethnic minority in the DRC who have been discriminated against because politicians both locally and nationwide do not recognise them as Congolese.
"Since the 60s, up until now, they have been experiencing rejection and their nationality has been revoked, the Congolese government believes they are not Congolese and have voted in the 90s to expel them back to Rwanda or Burundi."
Dr Ntanyoma told SBS News the Banyamulenge are a stateless group who are facing a slow genocide by local militia and armed groups.
But it is lacking media coverage.
“For many years these militia and armed groups have been attacking and destroying the Banyamulenge homeland. That means the territory where they used to live has shredded a lot. They are under huge pressure of being wiped out in DRC."
Claude Muco says he heard stories about people having to walk up to three days to be able to attend school in other parts of Congo, and it was hard to go back home.
People also had to protect their identity.
“Either you needed to change your names, for them to not identify you or where you from; and also you needed to pay a lot of money for you to get enrolled where other Congolese communities, they can pay fees for that. And yeah, it was a really, really tough time when my brother and my sister tell me those stories. Whenever you needed to go in the shop, you need to cover yourself with a mask or something for them to not see you and identify you where you're from. Otherwise, the rest of the community can stone you, can kill you, can get your things, your property and whatever you possess, and then take it. Then you can't go to the police to claim that."
Mr Muco still remembers being a child, living on a mountain.
When trouble approached, the locals banged drums to alert the village to run and hide in the bush in fear of their lives.
"So it was, it was scary. And a lot of community, they still have that kind of trauma, where even in Australia, some people say it's hard for them to go to the fireworks ceremony at the New Year, because once those shout comes, once those fireworks comes, it's a trauma (trigger). They can't handle that because it brings those memories and what happened in the past."
Mr Muco escaped to Rwanda when he was five.
But the feeling of not fully belonging lingered.
"In Rwanda, still, there was a bad gap of sense of belonging. And for me, my thought was like, I need to find a country where we have access to and the benefit for any other citizen and this country, we call it home, and that's where I was in my mind. I needed to find a country where my children, my grandchildren can live safely."
He now has Australian citizenship.
While it took going through a few visas to get there, including a student visa and a protection visa, he now feels like he is home.
But he says more can be done to support stateless communities like the Banyamulenge.
"A lot of people, they are illiterate (even) in their own language. So I'm trying to break those barriers, language barriers, but also (teach) how can you access the services and resources that are in Australia. What happened is a lot of people, due to faith, culture, language, they don't have the ability, really, to go and seek support."
He says there’s a gap in service delivery for his community, and organisations do not reach out properly to minority groups like his.
"For some community members, it's hard even to book appointments, language issues, you know, even being intimidated. They've been discriminated (against) in their own in their own countries, so why would they trust the government agencies? If their (former) government has been discriminating against them, has been killing them."
Jorge Aroche is the Chief Executive Officer of New South Wales' Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors ((STARTTS).
He told SBS statelessness can be a mentally tough journey.
"Being a stateless creates uncertainty. It makes any processes you know, to seek protection, to you know, begin your life elsewhere, a lot harder. And therefore it contributes to that, the situation of being in limbo and and and that's how can have tremendous impact on people's mental health, because, you know, it adds to whatever other trauma they're dealing with."
Mr Aroche says further awareness is needed to help support stateless people in Australia.
"Individuals fall through the cracks sometimes, and those situations are harder to resolve because, you know, you need to, I suppose, clear the background. But in general, I think more awareness about, the impact of not being recognised by any country, not being able to, you know, have any resource to protection from any country, because, you know, citizen of any country is something that certainly could help. I think most people in in our society probably don't even know that they are, you know, individuals that are stateless."
Asma is from the Rohingya community from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group who have lived for centuries in the predominantly Buddhist country.
Despite living in Myanmar for generations, the Rohingya are not recognised as an official ethnic group and and have been denied citizenship since 1982.
"Bodies strewn at the mouth of the Naf river, the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Ethnic Rohingya, men, women and children, hundreds killed. Drowned as they tried to escape the fighting between Myanmar's military and a powerful rebel group the Arakan Army."
Clashes are regularly reported, as in that story from Al Jazeera.
The United Nations says they’re the largest stateless community across the globe and about one million Rohingya refugees live in the world's largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh.
Born in 1988 in the Arakan state, Asma moved with her family when she was one to Rangoon, now called Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar.
She and her family had to hide their identity to live safely.
She went by the name Khin instead.
"If you didn't say your actual identity, you can live there. So my dad had to pay money and then paying money meant you have to make an ID to live there, because if you don't have an ID, you can't live in Rangoon city in Burma. So we had to act like we are like a Burmese Muslim."
She says she happily grew up as a Burmese Muslim ((Arakanese or Rakhine Muslim)), a tolerated minority.
Even though she didn’t wear the hijab at the time as she couldn’t be too visible about her religion.
But Asma didn’t know that she was Rohingya until she finished high school at 18.
"And I asked at home, I said we are Rohingya? My dad said, Yes, but we can't tell anyone we are Rohingya."
But despite people not knowing she was Rohingya she still had fears of being kidnapped.
On one occasion she thought her taxi driver would, because he saw one of her relatives wearing a hijab.
In 2013, Asma and her family came to Australia, feeling targeted and afraid of being found out.
While she is working now, after more than 10 years in Australia, she just received her permanent residency in February 2024.
"So, so how many years (do) I have to stay like that? So the limbo situation is very hard. Because of my visa, it doesn't matter how good I am, I can't change my position (job) because of my visa. Yeah, that's it. It's like, I feel like it's a discrimination, yup."
Katie Robertson is the Associate Director of the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness.
She's been working on refugee and asylum seeker issues for more than a decade.
"We have very limited protections on the ground for stateless people in Australia, firstly, and secondly, we have a really limited knowledge and understanding of statelessness in terms of demographics and numbers in Australia as well."
She says the way the immigration system is set up in Australia can cause stateless people to continue to belong nowhere.
"Stateless people in Australia can face a life of limbo, because at best they may have been placed on a Temporary Protection Visa by virtue of also being found to be a refugee, or at worst, if they are not found to be a refugee, being placed in prolonged and until recently indefinite immigration detention. And the problem is for stateless people, is that when no country in the world recognises you as belonging, there's no country to return to. And there's no country that the Australian Government can return people to."
Professor Robertson again highlights that while stateless people can become refugees, the two are not always the same.
"It's really important to stress in this issue that stateless people are not refugees. They're separate. They are separate issues. And I think this often gets conflated. And I think that that conflation runs the risk of minimising or misunderstanding the serious issue of statelessness."
When Asma saw a gap in the support for Rohingya women in Australia, she and her friends founded the Rohingya Woman’s Organisation to fill it.
"If they need something else, so they don't know where to go. Like, Australia government is not actually, actually not helping everything. We try to help our Rohingya parents. Rohingya women are educated, and then how to live in Australia, Australian style and whichever, like paperwork and stuff, like, if they need an interpreter, that we do - we're helping all the women whichever they need."
It's similar to work Claude Muco's doing with Banyamulenge people.
"A lot of people, they come with trauma, they come with a mental health, really severe mental health. And there is a lot of psychiatrists here, a lot of psychologists, where they can help. But I work with the community, and I work with these services on how can we put easy way for the community to access the services and also for the services to work effectively on how to work with this community and to break those gaps so and navigate different system in Australia."
The next episode of belonging nowhere is going to look into the Middle East conflict, and the people affected by the headlines being made across the world.
