The Stranger
Oscar Olivier spent 13 years advocating for asylum seekers in Israel. Now he's seeking refugee status in America.
Lucien Knuteson
When Oscar Olivier was in college...
in the 1980s and ’90s, he did what many college students do: He protested.
But he wasn’t in Berkeley or Boston; he was in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) living under military dictatorship, and he wanted to know why his Kinshasa university, Institut du Bâtiments et de Travaux Publics, wasn’t doling out the scholarship money it was supposed to deliver to students. A natural student organizer and representative of the student body, Olivier grew confident — too confident. One night, a group of plainclothes police officers attacked Olivier, stabbing him in the chest and waist and arresting him. By the time he was released, he knew he had to leave the country.