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Asylum seekers mark Idul Adha despite limitations
It was a quiet Idul Adha (Day of Sacrifice) for the more than 1,000 Muslim asylum seekers sheltering at a former building of the West Jakarta district military command (Kodim) in Kalideres
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span>It was a quiet Idul Adha (Day of Sacrifice) for the more than 1,000 Muslim asylum seekers sheltering at a former building of the West Jakarta district military command (Kodim) in Kalideres.
They held neither the qurban ritual of sacrificial cattle or goats nor any celebratory event as they continued their day-to-day lives at the shelter, thousands of kilometers from their countries of origin.
“There was no special celebration or event. After performing the Idul Adha prayer [on Sunday morning], we just greeted and congratulated each other briefly before returning to our tents,” Alikhan, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, told The Jakarta Post on Monday in fluent Indonesian.
However, a taste of the Idul Adha festivity was provided by the Jakarta Social Affairs Agency, which distributed cooked qurban meat to the 1,151 asylum seekers at the temporary shelter.
Social safety head Tarmijo Damanik said the agency had provided the qurban meat as a gesture of Idul Adha, as it had.stopped providing aid to asylum seekers on July 31, when the responsibility was transferred to the Indonesia representative office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Officials of the Jakarta Social Affairs Agency donated 25 cows for Idul Adha. The meat from the sacrifice was distributed to social homes, local residents, agency officials and asylum seekers,” Damanik told the Post by phone on Tuesday.
He said that agency staff had cooked the meat beforehand for the convenience of asylum seekers at the West Jakarta shelter.
On Monday, Sugito of the disaster mitigation and emergency response unit (Tagana), which falls under the Jakarta Social Affairs Agency, revealed that the asylum seekers had been receiving “donations” of cooked beef since Sunday.
At noon on Monday, a blue truck arrived at the shelter to distribute around 1,300 boxed meals from the agency to the asylum seekers, who come from 11 countries. Each box contained rice, fried tempeh, fried noodles and a portion of stewed beef.
Abdulwasajawed, also from Afghanistan, said he was grateful to the agency for providing them with meals for Idul Adha.
“It’s a rather quiet holiday, but I’m grateful that we have been able to eat beef since yesterday,” he told the Post on Monday while eating his lunch in front of his tent.
While they may have enjoyed extra meals during Idul Adha, the asylum seekers are struggling with limited water and poor sanitation at the shelter.
Alikhan said that a water truck would come every morning to fill the tanks at the shelter, but not enough to meet their daily needs.
“We usually run out of water by the evening. On the morning of Idul Adha, we did not have the water to perform wudhu (ritual ablution) for praying,” he said.
Alikhan also noted the poor sanitation facilities at the shelter, pointing out that only four outdoor toilets were available for over a thousand people.
“There was a large puddle of water in front of the toilet doors, since there is no drainage around the toilets,” he added.
Alikhan also said that the shelter did not have any bathing facilities, so the asylum seekers had erected a makeshift outdoor shower above the open sewers in the yard behind the shelter. (nal)
