Uncertain status: Marwan Mohammed holds his baby at the Kolekta Hotel migrant camp in Batam, Riau Islands.(JP/Fadli)

Refugees seeking shelter here are already a serious problem for a populous nation like Indonesia. And even more so if they give birth to babies within the country’s territory.

A case in point is the refugees giving birth in Batam, Riau Islands. The government has started to complain that these babies pose a threat to Indonesia’s sovereignty as they are automatically granted Indonesian citizenship.

Eight refugees gave birth in Batam last year. The Batam immigration office has asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to take anticipatory measures to deal with the increasing number of refugees giving birth.

“I have asked the UNHCR directly. But well, there’s no solution,” Batam immigration office head Agus Wijaya told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.

According to Law No. 12/2006 on Indonesian citizenship, all babies born in Indonesian territory, even those whose parents’ citizenship status is unclear, are to be given Indonesian Citizenship.

“But these births are planned. On one hand, we have to protect the country’s sovereignty [and make it] so that this rule does not automatically grant citizenship to immigrants’ babies born in Batam,” said Agus.

UNHCR representative in Indonesia Thomas Vargas said the law actually stated that children born to refugees in Indonesia were eligible for Indonesian citizenship only if at least one of the child’s parents was a citizen of Indonesia.

“On a separate issue, however, Indonesia is committed [as a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child] to providing birth certificates to all children born in Indonesia, regardless of their nationality, which UNHCR fully supports and promotes,” he told the Post.

He added that Batam people in general were friendly and welcoming toward foreigners and thus they did not have a problem with immigrants living among them, which further fueled concerns that the babies could pose problems.

“These immigrants feel comfortable living in Batam. They are happy,” Agus said. Therefore, he urged the UNHCR to make sure that refugees did not give birth in Batam.

From 2015 until 2016, eight refugees gave birth at the Elisabeth Hospital in Batam, located near to where they live. The refugees came from Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

One of the asylum seekers from Sudan is 24-year-old Marwan Mohammed. Marwan’s wife, 21-year-old Jab Doobabbala, gave birth to a baby boy named Ream Morwan Mohammed Haroon on May 13.

Marwan used to be a construction worker in Sudan, but he felt unsafe living in his country due to an ongoing conflict. Therefore, he decided to flee to Indonesia last year to seek a better life and now lives at the Hotel Kolekta in Batam.

“It is impossible to go back to Sudan. Now our dream is to go to a third country to have a better life,” said Marwan. “I don’t care if later in the third country we will experience discrimination. The most important thing is we live comfortably.”

In the hotel, there are currently 285 asylum seekers with only 53 of them having been granted refugee status. They have come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.

Commenting on the Batam immigration office’s request, Vargas said the government should respect everyone’s human rights, including those of refugees.

“Refugees have the same basic human rights that all of us have, including the fundamental right to have a family. Preventing them from establishing families or having children would be a violation of their basic human rights,” he said.

Nevertheless, Vargas said the UNHCR greatly appreciated the Indonesian government’s ongoing support of the protection of refugees.

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