Abdullah Karam, co-creator of an autobiographical game about leaving Syria in 2014, has been denied entry into the United Kingdom. Karam’s visa application was rejected just days before he was supposed to attend the Casual Connect Europe games conference in London where his game, Path Out, was nominated for the Indie Prize award.
Abdullah Karam presenting Path Out last year in Budapest at the Sziget Festival. Photo: Causa Creations (Facebook)
Karam currently resides in Austria, where he’s received refugee status. This has previously allowed him to travel to a number of different European countries without issue, according to a report by GamesIndustry.biz.
However, when he learned that Path Out was nominated for the Indie Prize in April (past winners include Hue, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, and Floor Kids), he learned he’d need a visa in order to travel inside the UK, where the event was scheduled to take place at the end of May. According to Karam, this process required paying to expedite the process and travelling numerous times to Vienna for interviews.
After everything was finally submitted, Karam learned on May 23 that his application had been rejected. Karam shared the rejection letter with GamesIndustry.biz. It pointed to a lack of sufficient “translated evidence” by the game designer demonstrating his income. The reviewer of his application determined that Karam could not “be relied upon to meet the conditions of visit entry clearance”, and wasn’t convinced he intended to leave the UK once the visit was over.
All set for @CasualConnect with #PathOut ❤️ pic.twitter.com/f18w55BdfF
— wobblersound (@wobblersound) May 29, 2018
“I think the decision is ludicrous,” said Georg Hobmeier, Karam’s colleague at Causa Creations, the studio behind Path Out and other games, in an email to Kotaku. “Some facts were simply wrong and the main argument was based on a missing non-mandatory item.”
That item was evidence of Karam’s finances, including a pay stub or bank statement, which Hobmeier and Karam said the rejection letter appeared to hinge on despite it not being a required part of the application. The UK visa application website lists supporting documents such as bank statements as optional.
In an email to Kotaku, he said he thought the work information he put in the application would suffice. “I thought the documents I included from my company were enough to prove my salary so other than it not being mandatory I didn’t have any other reason not to include it.”
As a refugee who fled the Syrian War and then made a game about it, the inability to freely travel to a game conference in another European city to promote it is a particularly disappointing twist.
“I felt sad and mistreated – let alone the fact they claimed I had two kids and wrote my email address wrong,” Karam told GamesIndustry.biz, adding that he felt the treatment he received was possibly related to his background and refugee status. “A European will never have to go through this treatment, but for a refugee or citizen of a nation outside of the global power club it’s a must.”
Hobmeier, who is able to attend the event, also sees the application rejection, including its unhelpful timing of just a week before the game conference, as being part of a larger, anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe at the moment.
“In Austria we have a sad tradition of being on the forefront of right wing populism, heavy discrimination against refugees and hateful rhetorics have been part of our political discourse since decades. It’s sad and shameful, but unfortunately true,” he said.
“Other European countries have certainly jumped on that bandwagon lately and we see an increasingly vitriolic tone that is directed against migrants, most often a very transparent effort to blame those vulnerable parts of society for political shortcomings and social problems with other origins.”
Whatever the ultimate reason, Karam will be missing the chance to attend the Indie Game prize event where Path Out is nominated either way, seemingly because the UK government is afraid if they let him into the country, he might never leave.
Comments
9 responses to “Maker Of Game About Fleeing Syrian Civil War Denied Entry Into The UK ”
Well, that’s fucked up.
Brexit removes Britain as the site of future european centric events. And I’m pretty sure rejecting the movement of european citizens through foreign borders will only result in reciprocity from Europe.
There isn’t a conspiracy here. He did not satisfy the criteria required so he doesn’t get to go in. Respect a country’s sovereignty and accept that if they don’t want you there then you have to deal with it. I sincerely doubt the decision was based purely on one thing they claimed wasn’t stated as a requirement. Possibly failed an interview and they were just being nice like when an interview panel says “thanks we’ll be in touch” but they already know you aren’t getting the job.
I would imagine a genuine refugee would be happy they are living in a great country and away from the war they fled, not having a whinge because they can’t attend some low key award conference which is a dime a dozen all year round across the world.
Unpopular opinion so I assume downvotes will be incoming.
I won’t down vote you, but I will ask, what is a genuine refugee,
Seems like his refugee credentials are fairly solid.
Perhaps you mean “grateful refugee?”
I agree we may not know the whole story, but dude…
You are correct. Grateful would be a more appropriate word to use.
He should be grateful he’s even allowed on the bus at all and should stop complaining that he has to sit at the back
But it sounds like they got some hard facts clearly wrong. They said he has 2 kids but does not.
He’s applying for a working visa and got denied.
He has a list of reasons why he was denied, but decides to play the discrimination card.
Why not resubmit with the evidence they require?
Pretty much every Govn forms you fill in these days requires black ink (aka black pen). It’s because they are scanned and read into a compuper (sic). The OCR computer program then does fuzzy logic checking, all sorts of checking, based on the nature of the form. It then spits out either yes/no/yes – with approval forward to a human/probably no – but get a human to check/can’t tell – get a human to check.
In this poor guys situation, lets hope it was a “probably no – but get a human to check”. Said poor sap human then spent 2 minutes and decided, “nope”. Rinse and repeat.
Here’s why. There is no pay off for the poor sap to say “no” just to “get even” – they are never going to even meet the guy. Instead, a minimum requirement wasn’t met and so it was “no”. In all likelihood nothing to do with who he is, what he stands for or even what he’s done. He simply didn’t get enough green-calls in an Excel spreadsheet.
I hope he reapplies, dots all the I’s, crosses all the T’s (including the optional ones) and gets to go to the UK.
The problem here is the timing. He already paid to get fast tracked and got rejected. Even if a new application is sent through and approved it’s unlikely to be in time for the event
I agree… its a sucky system.