5 | PROTECTING STATELESS PERSONS FROM ARBITRARY DETENTION IN THE NETHERLANDS INTRODUCING THE INTERVIEWEES Mohammed Al-Fadhly is a stateless Bidoon from Kuwait. He is in his 30s and arrived in the Netherlands on a fake passport in April 2013, hoping to escape the utter exclusion faced by the Bidoon community in his home country. Even though his statelessness is well-established, he spent two months in border detention, and has spent the last 8 months or so in a ‘freedom-restricting location’. At the time of writing, he was still there. Yusuf Adam is a young man from Somalia, who came to the Netherlands in 2009. He is a member of the often-discriminated Bajuni tribe from the south of the country, close to the border of Kenya. To this date, the Dutch authorities doubt his Somali origins, and have presented him to the embassies of Kenya and Uganda instead. These embassies denied his citizenship, and Yusuf has been detained twice as attempts to arrange his deportation continue. Ivan Niyazov (pseudonym) is a 46-year old man originally from the Soviet Union. He was born in what is now Uzbekistan. Fleeing the country in 1990, he drifted through several countries before finally arriving in the Netherlands in 2002. Ivan can neither obtain Russian nor Uzbek nationality. He is HIV positive, has chronic hepatitis C and suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. He has been in and out of alien detention, losing about 3.5 years to imprisonment. Hazem Haboush is 26 years old and comes from Gaza, Palestine. He fled to the Netherlands in January 2015. Upon arrival he was immediately placed in border detention. After a little more than two months he was released because there was no prospect of his deportation, though his asylum claim was also rejected. Panic attacks while in detention led to his solitary confinement, which still haunts him today. He is destitute and lives in a night shelter. Angela and Christina Avakian (pseudonyms) are two ethnically Armenian sisters from Azerbaijan. Although both in their mid-20s at present, they arrived in the Netherlands in their early teens already. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have refused to facilitate the family’s voluntary return countless times. An attempt at deportation led to their detention in late 2012, which impacted the sisters hugely. A court ruled that their detention was unlawful. A courtordered moratorium on their forced return expired in April 2015. Pamma Singh is a middle-aged man from rural India. He was smuggled to the Netherlands in 2000, in search of a better life. It was the first time he left his country. Pamma never possessed any proof of his Indian citizenship. He was detained twice, for a total period of about 20 months. He has approached his embassy countless times, but without proof of identity they will not facilitate his return. He is in ill health and survives with the help of a few concerned compatriots.