Ariff Bhatti, a 53-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker in South Korea, and his family are lucky to be alive and living in South Korea. From being shot at and family members kidnapped, to fleeing the country that he loved, Bhatti’s story highlights the struggle that many asylum seekers face.

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riff Bhatti, a 53-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker in South Korea, and his family are lucky to be alive and living in South Korea. From being shot at and family members kidnapped, to fleeing the country that he loved, Bhatti’s story highlights the struggle that many asylum seekers face.

The Bhatti’s were an ordinary Christian family, living a simple life in Pakistan prior to the conflict.

“We had a good space to live, a good house and a sufficient amount to survive,” Bhatti said.

Though not affluent, the Bhatti family had jobs and the children went to school in Karachi, the biggest city in Pakistan, prior to seeking refuge in Korea.

The Bhatti family’s ordinary life came to an end in 2002.

Bhatti’s father was shot dead during a terrorist attack on the Macedonian consulate, where he worked as a security guard.

Losing a member of their family was painful but what lay ahead was just as bad.

Even before Bhatti’s family finished the funeral and rituals for his dead father, they received phone calls threatening their lives.

Anonymous callers warned Bhatti not to apply for compensation from the government for his father’s death, which he was entitled to as his father was killed while on duty for the government.

“They would call and say, you are not able to get compensation,” Bhatti said. “When I asked why, they began using bad language but did not explain why I could not get compensation.”

As a result, Bhatti family decided not to apply for compensation as their safety was under threat.

The Bhatti’s went about their lives again until one winter night in 2012; there was a drive-by shooting and his family were the target.

The façade of his house had been scarred by gunshots and so had their emotional wellbeing.

“I don’t know why we were being attacked,” Bhatti said. “I don’t have any enemy in Pakistan.”

“My neighbor asked me not to sit outside because their life will be in danger,” he said. “They said because of you, our life can be threatened as well.”

Soon after, he began receiving threatening calls again.

Then Bhatti’s son was kidnapped and released after 36 painstaking hours.

“When they put our son just in front of our door, we thought he had died but we took him to the hospital,” he said. “He received first aid and medication and then he had to receive more treatment for a few more days at home.”

Bhatti went to the police station to report the case but the police did not want to file the report, as they believed it would only expose his family to more attacks.

Bhatti said that in Pakistan police and politicians fear fundamentalist groups, which prevents victims being given protection and fair treatment.

“Politicians and police cannot do an effective job,” he argued. “When they are trying to save their own lives, how can they save others’ lives?”

Bhatti decided to bring his family to South Korea.

“I thought South Korea would be better than other places because Mr. Ban Ki-moon from Korea is the Secretary[-General] of the U.N.”

Also, he thought that Korea’s great portion of Christian population meant that the Korean government would actively help other Christians around the world whose lives are threatened.

On top of that, having made a few friends while he visited Korea in 1998, Bhatti thought that there would be support systems that would enable him to settle in Korea.

Bhatti began the asylum seeker application process in September 2013, but a complicated bureaucratic system began to dismantle his Korean dream.

He was required to submit evidence that proves his family’s lives were under threat in Pakistan.

Having fled the country without anything Bhatti did not have evidence other than newspaper articles that covered the incident that led to his father’s death.



The interviewer at the asylum seeker office in Seoul pointed out that the two other security guards killed during this shootout were Muslims and he did not believe that Bhatti’s family was under threat because they are Christian.

“During interview, [the interviewer] told me that, I know you are coming here for money-making,” Bhatti said.

He also said the interviewer claimed that his family is not under threat because there were other Muslim victims when his father was killed and in Pakistan in general.

“In our residential area, there were eight Muslim neighbors – we all knew each other and we celebrated together,” he said. “Muslims are not doing anything, it’s just the fundamentalist [terrorist] organizations.”

The Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim groups have warred for centuries and this war continues in Pakistan and throughout the world.

A suicide bomber blew up a Shi’ite mosque in January. The Sunni fundamentalist group Jundullah, a splinter of the Pakistani Taliban, took credit for this attack, which killed 55 and injured 590 Shi’ite Muslims.

Slightly more than 18 percent of asylum seekers cited religious conflict as reason for seeking asylum, which is the second-most-popular reason after political conflict. However, asylum applicants on religious ground made up only 11.3 percent of the total number of accepted asylum seekers.

After Bhatti had the interview at the refugee division, he was told that the division will notify him of the result.

“I did not receive any notification that my case was disapproved,” he said. “I only found it out when I went to extend my visa.”

Currently, he has filed an administrative appeal against Korea Immigration Service at the Ministry of Justice.

Out of 3,833 asylum seekers whose applications were rejected, 1,627 of them, about 50 percent of the denied applicants, filed administrative appeals against the Korean government.

This appeal rate is comparable to other countries, like Germany, have about 80 percent of its rejected applicants filing an appeal where the U.K. has about 30 percent of them filing an appeal.

When asylum seekers are notified of the rejection of their application, they can request for a review.

Throughout the application process, Bhatti said that it appeared like the interviewer did not fully comprehend the situation in Pakistan.

Lawyer Park Young-ah points out that in most cases, the refugee division makes decisions without having a full grasp of the situation of the country these asylum seekers came from.

“Interviewers judge whether the asylum seekers’ words make sense based on what they have experienced in Korea,” she said. “But situations in the countries which asylum seekers come from are very different from that in Korea.”

“To attain the best possible understanding of the situation in the asylum seekers’ country of origin, other developed nations hire experts who can provide more accurate insights into the current situation in the asylum seekers’ countries of origin,” Park said.

The lawyer said that most refugees flee their countries when they were just about to be attacked or harmed so the burden of proof lies in potential threats that have not been realized.

“In order to prove that they are in danger, asylum seekers often have to provide evidence of a series of incidents, not just a single episode, which is almost impossible to do when they escaped from their countries in a rush,” Park said.

“Most of these incidents might not necessarily have evidence per se but that does not mean that these threats do not exist.”

According to the Ministry of Justice’s report, as of December 2014, 2,896 people have applied for asylum but only 94 of them were accepted and 1,745 rejected in 2014.

Asylum application acceptance rate in South Korea is 8.1 percent as of 2013, which is more than three times lower than the average rate in western nations.

The acceptance rate of the United Kingdom in 2013 is 35 percent.

There are 13 officers are at the Refugee Division and only two of them are in charge of reviewing the applications and interviewing the applicants.

Some 14,000 Pakistani Christians sought asylum in 2013, according to the Pakistani NGO World Vision in Progress.

UNHCR Korea told The Korea Observer that though the Division strives to improve the situation of asylum seekers in Korea, it needs more staff to effectively manage the increasing influx of asylum seekers to Korea.

A spokesperson of the refugee division at the Ministry of Justice said that the division is still in the process of improving its framework as it has only been established in April 2013.

“The number of interviewers have not been able to keep up with the rapidly increasing number of asylum seekers so we plan to recruit more interviewers,” said the spokesperson. “We also understand that the budget needs to be expanded to better serve the asylum seekers.”