Farasat

Farasat was born in 1994 in a small town in Pakistan. He was living in a very peaceful environment with his family, until 2012. At the time he a student in the same high school that his father was a teacher, and also the president of the local council’s department of education.

“We never thought about leaving our homes. We are still in love with our country, but we have no options.” Due to discrimination between religious groups, his family was forced by the government to leave his posts and give up all his finances and properties, and was eventually imprisoned as well.

“Lots of people tried to encourage my father to escape. But, he didn’t want to, and went to his job every day until he was arrested.”

 “We are Muslims, too. Only God can judge people in our religion. But our community is excluded from the society because of the differences in our beliefs. My father dedicated himself to teaching children, and he became a very important person. But he was blamed for teaching Muslim children and my siblings and I were blamed for playing with them…”

“The main common rule in every religion is respect. And our own people weren’t respectful to us… We didn’t have any hopes for our future in the country.”

Farasat stopped studying, and when his father finally finished his sentence, they began to look for possibilities for leave the country.

“We didn’t want money, we didn’t want power. We only wanted to save our lives…”

It was difficult for them to decide to leave a country that they were so committed to. Farasat said they were ready to give everything for their country. It was too risky to bring the whole family at the same time because all of them were being threatened. They moved city to city until they came to London in December of 2012.

He still remembers exactly the conversation between his father and the UK border police. His father said: “Do you think that I am a wrong person? I spent all my life in Pakistan and I am 55 years old now. If you send me back, they are going to kill us. And if I am going to die anyway, you can kill me here in UK. It doesn’t matter where I die.” And they received refugee status at the border. The UK helped them to reunite their family in September 2013.

“I found my life at the last point of it. Hope is never finished”