Image: Shutterstock / NatalyaBond

Bangkok – Six years ago, several days after taking his high school exams, Ibrahim and his family fled Syria to Lebanon where they boarded a flight to Bangkok.

Arriving in the Thai capital on tourist visas, they experienced freedom away from the horrors of war in Syria. 

But since their visas expired, they have been living as undocumented migrants.

“We thought of Thailand as a transit point,” Ibrahim told Al Jazeera, “and that we would stay one or two years. Yet after six years, our lives are stuck in limbo.”

In Thailand, Ibrahim’s family applied for resettlement in the US only to wait for two years with no progress.

They then requested resettlement in Canada, restarting the entire process.

In Bangkok, it takes an average of three to four years to complete the resettlement process, leaving many refugees vulnerable and frustrated. 

“We’d love to live here, it’s like the Middle East. People are friendly and will talk to you, unlike people in Europe who won’t say hello,” said Ibrahim. “We no longer dream of peace, only of a passport.”

Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the Thai Immigration Act of 1979 views anyone overstaying their visa as an illegal immigrant, including asylum seekers and refugees.

The UNHCR told Al Jazeera that Thailand is home to 103,000 refugees with an estimated 6,000 urban refugees from countries including Pakistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Syria.

Thailand was among the last countries to maintain a consulate in Damascus, making it an obtainable visa at a time when doors were shutting to those fleeing Syria.

Mirvat came to Thailand in 2012 soon after graduating from Damascus University. 

Six years later, she remains in Bangkok where she has had four children but has not been able to pursue her career. 

“The most difficult thing is that our kids can’t attend school and have nothing to do,” she told Al Jazeera. 

The greatest fear facing Bangkok’s urban refugees is arrest and as a result, many stay inside their homes for long stretches of time.

“I can no longer go to the market and am scared to go to the hospital. We feel scared by everything,” said Mivrat.

Refugees’ fears have recently been heightened by a major police operation that began in October with the appointment of Surachet Hakparn, the new immigration bureau commissioner of the Royal Thai Police. 

“Operation X-Ray Outlaw Foreigner” aims to round up and detain undocumented migrants, with asylum seekers and refugees caught up in the clampdown.

Police raids have led to hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers being held at immigration detention centres.

Last month, the immigration bureau also revoked bail for undocumented migrants who could have previously been released on 50,000 baht ($1,500).

An estimated 200 refugees from Syria were among those summoned back into detention.

The recurrent myth that refugees are a security threat and a drain on society is simply not true. Palestinians and Syrians are incredibly productive and resourceful.

Evan Jones, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network

Refugees previously granted bail are now subject to increased harassment and arrest, said migrants and rights groups.

“The immigration detention centre is not designed for long-term stay, but hundreds of detainees stay for more than one year,” Puttanee Kangkun of Fortify Rights told Al Jazeera.

Most are overcrowded with more than 300 detainees held in a cell designed for 70 inmates. 

In violation of children’s rights under international law, children are separated from parents and siblings while unaccompanied boys under the age of 12 are held alongside adult men.

Officially, Thai authorities claim that some refugees have fake UNHCR cards and that the operation will check their documents, and re-release genuine asylum seekers on bail.

However, local refugee rights groups told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity that they were sceptical, noting that the Thai government works closely with UNHCR and can easily check its database. 

“Beside the UNHCR card, which has almost no meaning under domestic legal provisions, [refugees] have no other legal protection,” said Puttanee Kangkun.

‘We do not ask for money, only to be resettled’

The hostile environment has made a bad situation worse for refugees. Over the past year, Thai immigration police have targeted African immigrants in Bangkok in what has been criticised as racial profiling. 

Compared to Somali, Nigerian and other African nationalities, Arabs have had moments where they were able to evade authorities more easily and enjoy some degree of greater freedom.

Ibrahim and his mother used to supplement their remittances by selling Arab street food including shawarma, hummus, and bread at community events and near local mosques. But the recent clampdown on immigration has put a stop to this.

Basil, a 20-year old Palestinian refugee from Syria, explained: “For a long time, I could go out, eat, party and have a life here. But that has all changed now.”

“Soi Arab”, the Middle Eastern quarter in the heart of Bangkok’s tourist district of Nana, is home to restaurants where young Syrian and Palestinian refugees work without documentation. 

“I was paid 250 baht ($7.50) a day for a 12-hour shift washing dishes and the owner gave leftover food for me and my family,” said Basil. 

Yet recently, fearing police raids, owners are asking refugee workers to stay home. 

“Nobody is working now,” said Basil.

Despite the recent immigration raids, refugees Al Jazeera spoke to were not critical of the Thai government. 

“We feel abandoned by the United Nations,” said Mivrat. “We do not ask for money, only to be resettled.”

Sources told Al Jazeera that around 20 percent of the refugees from Syria in Thailand have been resettled, which is high compared to the less than 1 percent global average for third country resettlement. 

The majority were Syrian passport holders, with only around 50 individuals left in Thailand.

Those stuck in Bangkok are primarily Palestinian refugees whose options are more limited. 

No Palestinian refugees have been resettled in 2018, while resettlement to the US has ground to a halt since the election of President Trump. 

“For many Syrian and Palestinian refugees, the sad reality is that they may never be considered for resettlement in a third country,” Evan Jones of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network told Al Jazeera.

“With global resettlement numbers dropping, these individuals may be stuck on the fringes of Thai society for years or even decades ahead, unable to access some of their most basic human rights.”

If given a choice, many Palestinian refugees from Syria would settle in Thailand. The majority interviewed for this story have university degrees and had established careers before fleeing the war.

But within some sections of Thai society, Arab refugees are perceived as posing a security threat.

“The Thai government should accept the reality that not every refugee could resettle in third countries, so the concept of local integration needs to be taken into consideration in balance with national security concerns for a sustainable solution,” said Puttanee Kangkun of Fortify Rights.

Jones added: “The recurrent myth that refugees are a security threat and a drain on society is simply not true. Palestinians and Syrians are incredibly productive and resourceful and bring a range of skills and knowledge that could help benefit Thai society.”

Even if the Syrian war ends, Palestinian refugees who travelled to Thailand on now-expired emergency documents have lost the right to return to Palestine. Renewing their travel documents has also become much more difficult since the Syrian consulate in Bangkok closed in 2017. 

Refugees that Al Jazeera spoke with estimate that there are 400 Palestinian refugees from Syria remaining in Bangkok, with another 201 from Iraq and 15 from Gaza. 

For some of them, resettlement will be to a fourth rather than a third country. 

Asma was born in Haifa in 1940 and as a young girl fled Palestine for Iraq. She was displaced again by Iraq’s descent into violence after 2003, living for three years in a refugee camp in Cyprus before arriving in Thailand. 

“I asked the UN to send me home to Haifa,” she said. “I just want to be in my country.”

Stan Lee, who dreamed up Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and a cavalcade of other Marvel Comics superheroes that became mythic figures in pop culture with soaring success at the movie box office, died at the age of 95, his daughter said on Monday.

As a writer and editor, Lee was key to the ascension of Marvel into a comic book titan in the 1960s when, in collaboration with artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he created superheroes who would enthrall generations of young readers.

“He felt an obligation to his fans to keep creating,” his daughter JC Lee said in a statement to Reuters news agency. “He loved his life and he loved what he did for a living. His family loved him and his fans loved him. He was irreplaceable.”

Lee was declared dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee’s daughter. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Americans were familiar with superheroes before Lee, in part thanks to the 1938 launch of Superman by Detective Comics, the company that would become DC Comics, Marvel’s archrival.

Lee was widely credited with adding a new layer of complexity and humanity to superheroes. They had love and money worries and endured tragic flaws or feelings of insecurity.

“I felt it would be fun to learn a little about their private lives, about their personalities and show that they are human as well as super,” Lee told NPR News in 2010.

He had help in designing the superheroes but he took full ownership of promoting them.

His creations included web-slinging teenager Spider-Man, the muscle-bound Hulk, mutant outsiders The X-Men, the close-knit Fantastic Four and the playboy-inventor Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man.

Dozens of Marvel Comics movies, with nearly all the major characters Lee created, were produced in the first decades of the 21st century, grossing over $20bn at theaters worldwide, according to box office analysts. 

Spider-Man is one of the most successfully licensed characters ever.

Lee, as a hired hand at Marvel, received limited payback on the windfall from his characters.

In a 1998 contract, he wrestled a clause for 10 percent of profits from movies and TV shows with Marvel characters.

In 2002, he sued to claim his share, months after “Spider-Man” conquered movie theaters. In a legal settlement three years later, he received a $10m one-time payment.

Hollywood studios made superheroes the cornerstone of their strategy of producing fewer films and relying on big profits from blockbusters. Some people assumed that, as a result, Lee’s wealth had soared. He disputed that. 

“I don’t have $200m. I don’t have $150m. I don’t have $100m or anywhere near that,” Lee told Playboy magazine in 2014. Having grown up in the Great Depression, Lee added that he was “happy enough to get a nice paycheck and be treated well”.

In 2008, Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest government award for creative artists.

Initially thought comics were a dead-end career

Lee was born as Stanley Martin Lieber in New York on December 28, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania. 

At age 17, he became an errand boy at Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel. He got the job with help from an inside connection, his uncle, according to Lee’s autobiography Excelsior!

Lee soon earned writing duties and promotions. He penned Western stories and romances, as well as superhero tales, and often wrote standing on the porch of the Long Island, New York, home he shared with his wife, actress Joan Lee, whom he married in 1947 and who died in 2017.

The couple had two children, Joan Celia born in 1950 and Jan Lee who died within three days of her birth in 1953.

In 1961, Lee’s boss saw a rival publisher’s success with caped crusaders and told Lee to dream up a superhero team.

Lee at the time felt comics were a dead-end career. But his wife urged him to give it one more shot and create the complex characters he wanted to, even if it led to his firing.

The result was the Fantastic Four. There was stretchable Mr Fantastic, his future wife Invisible Woman, her brother the Human Torch and strongman The Thing. They were like a devoted but dysfunctional family.

“Stan’s characters were always superheroes that had a certain amount of humanity about them or a flaw,” said Shirrel Rhoades, a former executive vice president of Marvel and its publisher in the mid-1990s.

“As iconic as Superman may be, he’s considered a Boy Scout. He doesn’t have any real flaws,” Rhoades said. “Whereas you take a Spider-Man, kids identify with him because he had his problems like they did. He suffered from great angst.”

Lee considered the comic-book medium an art form and he was prolific. By some accounts, he came up with a new comic book every day for 10 years.

“I wrote so many I don’t even know. I wrote either hundreds or thousands of them,” he told the Associated Press in 2006.

Lee involved his artists in the process of creating the story and even the characters themselves, in what would come to be known as the “Marvel Method.”

It sometimes led critics to fault Lee for taking credit for ideas not entirely his own.

He described his creative process to Reuters in outlining how he came up with his character Thor, the god of thunder borrowed from Norse mythology.

“I was trying to think of something that would be totally different,” he said. “What could be bigger and even more powerful than the Hulk? And I figured why not a legendary god?”

To give Thor more rhetorical punch, Lee gave him dialogue styled after the Bible and Shakespeare.

As for Tony Stark-Iron Man, he was based on industrialist Howard Hughes, Lee told interviewers.

Stan’s soapbox

Lee became Marvel’s publisher in 1972. He went on the lecture circuit, moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and pursued opportunities for his characters in movies and television. 

Through it all, he kept connected with fans, writing a column called “Stan’s Soapbox” in which he often slipped in his catchphrase “‘Nuff Said” or the sign-off “Excelsior!” In his later years, he gave constant updates via Twitter.

“Stan was a character. He was a character as much as any he ever created,” Rhoades said. “He created himself, in a way.”

He also made cameos in most Marvel films, pulling a girl away from falling debris in 2002’s Spider-Man and serving as an emcee at a strip club in 2016’s Deadpool.

The Walt Disney Co bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4bn in a deal to expand Disney’s roster of characters, with the most iconic ones having been Lee’s handiwork.

By that point, Lee had all but parted ways with Marvel after being made a chairman emeritus of the company. But even in his 80s and 90s, Lee was a wellspring of new projects, running a company called POW! Entertainment.

pic.twitter.com/dTdDjRvXbs

— stan lee (@TheRealStanLee) November 12, 2018

Recent projects he helped make possible range from the films Black Panther and Doctor Strange to such TV series as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Guardians of the Galaxy.

“His greatest legacy will be not only the co-creation of his characters but the way he helped to build the culture that comics have become, which is a pretty significant one,” said Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University.