Bangkok’s little-known population of Pakistani asylum seekers uses community action to respond to the challenges facing refugees without a camp. In an unremarkable concrete apartment block on the outskirts of Bangkok, over 100 families from Pakistan wait.
Two years ago, gunmen shot dead Farooq Kahloun’s newly married son Saad Farooq, 26, in an attack that severely injured Kahloun, his younger son Ummad, and Saad’s father-in-law, Choudhry Nusrat. Saad died on the spot. In Pakistan after travelling from his home in New York for the wedding, Nusrat died in hospital later. Four bullets remain in Kahloun’s chest and arm. A bullet lodged behind the right eye of Ummad, a student in the UK, was surgically removed months later.