Archive - June 2013

If most primary school aged children drew pictures of men with automatic weapons shooting unarmed people, complete with blood flowing freely, you’d probably suggest they’ve been watching too many MA rated movies or playing violent video games.

I’ve seen pictures like that, drawn by young children, but they had nothing to do with inappropriate viewing or gaming. These children were drawing real life experiences, traumatic scenes they’d witnessed themselves, and the people being massacred were most often their brothers or fathers or mothers.

The pictures I saw were created by refugee children who had escaped hellish conditions in their own country to travel the open seas in boats that weren’t in suitable shape to float across a lake. Together with their families they were seeking a better life and along the way they encountered pirates who would exploit even the most vulnerable to take what little they had, without caring who they slaughtered along the way.

I saw those images when I worked within W.A.’s Education Department. I worked in a resource centre that supported the English as a Second Language programs that the department ran. At the time there was animosity towards refugees in our community. It was said that these so called ‘refugees’ were people with plenty of money wanting to get into our country illegally and that they were simply rorting the system. I knew different. I’d seen those pictures which are still burnt into my memory more than 25 years later. I can’t even begin to imagine how much the incidents they depicted still haunt those who saw them first hand when they were young, impressionable children.

Boat People

It amazes me that there is still so much false information surrounding refugees. They’re called ‘boat people’ or ‘illegals’ and that’s when people are being ‘polite’. We hear that they are flooding our country. We hear talk about stopping the boats, not because we want to stop lives being endangered on unseaworthy vessels but because we don’t want those people invading our country.

It’s time we all grew up

Where’s our compassion? Where’s our sense of a fair go?

Thankfully there are many people who are seeking to tell the true story. These refugees are not ‘boat people’ but fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters seeking refuge from oppression. It’s not illegal to seek asylum.

The issue of how asylum seekers reach our shores is a complex one but it won’t be solved until we all grow up and start looking at the issue with compassion and thoughtfulness.

Refugee Week

This week is Refugee Week and today is World Refugee Day.

Refugee Week is Australia’s peak annual activity to inform the public about refugees and celebrate positive contributions made by refugees to Australian society. The first Refugee Week events were organised in Sydney in 1986 by Austcare. In 1987, Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) became a co-organiser of the week, which became a national event from 1988. RCOA took on responsibility for the national coordination of Refugee Week from 2004. Major-General Paul Cullen, the foundation president of both Austcare and RCOA, actively lobbied, from the 1980s, for a global annual celebration of the contribution of refugees. His dream was achieved in 2001, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) coordinated the first World Refugee Day (June 20).

Refugee Week provides a platform where positive images of refugees can be promoted in order to create a culture of welcome throughout the country. The ultimate aim of the celebration is to create better understanding between different communities and to encourage successful integration enabling refugees to live in safety and to continue making a valuable contribution to Australia.

This year’s theme is Restoring Hope.

Refugee Council of Australia has chosen Restoring Hope as the Refugee Week theme for 2012 to 2014.

The theme reminds us that, while a refugee’s journey begins with danger, it also begins with hope. Refugees flee their homelands not only because they fear persecution, but also because they have hope: they hope to find freedom from persecution, and safety and security for themselves and their families; they hope to be given a chance to start a new life and recover from past trauma.

The theme also calls attention to the role of countries which, through offering protection to refugees and providing them an opportunity to rebuild their lives, restore hope for a future free from fear, persecution, violence and insecurity.

Finally, the theme aims to highlight the situation of refugees whose hopes have not been fulfilled – those who remain in seriously protracted situations, facing ongoing discrimination, violence and uncertainty, with little hope for a resolution in the near future. The theme calls on us to consider how we can provide solutions for these refugees and restore their hopes for a brighter future.

If you want to stand up and show that as a country we can do better in welcoming people to our country you can be part of Walk Together this Saturday. There are walks right across Australia.

Walk Together takes place on the Saturday of Refugee Week. In cities and regional centres all over Australia, you’re invited to join this celebration of diversity and present a picture to our leaders and media of the Australia that is possible. An Australia that recognises in its public debate, media conversation and legislation that “if we’re all people, we’re all equal”. Equally deserving of freedom, fairness, opportunity to contribute, welcome and belonging.

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