How 3 strangers are helping refugees start new lives in Canada

Warning: This story contains mention of suicide.

When Shams Erfan arrived in Toronto in March of 2022, it marked the end of nearly eight years spent in political limbo in Indonesia — much of it in prison-like detention centres.

"When a Canadian immigration officer stamped my permanent residency paper and told me, 'Welcome to Canada,' I felt human. I felt reborn," Erfan, a refugee originally from Afghanistan, told the CBC's Alisa Siegel.

Erfan fled Afghanistan in late 2014 at the age of 15, on the run from the Taliban, the militant Islamist group. Like thousands of other Afghan refugees, he soon found himself trapped in Indonesia.

He eventually ended up in Toronto, thanks to Canada's private sponsorship program.

Now 25, Erfan is working with Canadian refugee advocate Stephen Watt and Australian retired academic and donor Miriam Faine to help bring other refugees from Indonesia — some of whom have been there for up to a decade — to start new lives in Canada.

"To me, it goes without saying that we need to support people who are fleeing [for] their lives. And I feel a compulsion to do what I can to support refugees," said Faine, who estimates she's helped nearly 200 refugee cases.

Erfan was born and raised in a remote village in eastern Afghanistan. He is Hazara, an ethnic group that has long been persecuted by the Taliban, which is a predominantly Pashtun nationalist group.

In 2014, Taliban members pulled Erfan off a bus and accused him of being a traitor. They slapped his face and called him "the servant of Westerners," he recalled.

"I was 100 per cent convinced that I was about to be shot dead," Erfan said.

He believes it was thanks to the intervention of a stranger — a woman who told the Taliban that Erfan was her son — that saved his life. But he knew he had to flee the country.

With the help of paid smugglers, Erfan fled to India, then Malaysia, and eventually sailed to Indonesia. There, he hoped to find refugee status and a safe haven. Instead, he spent a year on the streets of the capital, Jakarta.

By 2015, the only option for shelter, food and medical treatment came with surrendering to a migrant detention centre run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Erfan quickly learned, however, that the centre was effectively a prison, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.