By DR GRAHAM THOM
As a father myself, there’s something particularly haunting about seeing kids trying to play in a desert, made up of rocks and dust, devoid of anything you’d relate to a normal childhood.
Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan is 12 kilometres away from the border with Syria and a place I recently visited as part of my role as Refugee Coordinator at Amnesty International.
This camp is temporary ‘home’ to more than 85,000 people. Over 17,000 of them are children under the age of five.
These kids are highly traumatised by the armed conflicts they’ve fled and often sit quietly alongside their parents as they recount stories of beatings, kidnaps, rape and murder.
One couple I met had three young children that sat and watched nearby as they told me how the husband’s sister had been brutally murdered. They explained how not long after, while the family was at home, militants invaded. The husband was assaulted in front of his family, he had bones broken, including his shoulder. His wife, who had only given birth a few months before, to the couple’s youngest child, was brutally kicked in the stomach.
Their two young boys, both aged under five, were also beaten. One of the boys had his tooth smashed and the other was hit in the forehead with the butt of a rifle, leaving him with a large scar. The militants stole anything of value and smashed everything else, telling the family “You have to leave”.
Later that day, I watched as these kids played with other children from the camp in trenches that had been dug as an extra security measure, around the perimeter of the camp. For the kids, this wasn’t a reminder of the precarious situation they were in: it was just another thing they could climb and play in and have fun.
These are the kids that Australia can and should do more for. They are the innocent survivors of civil war in Syria and Iraq, hoping trauma is a memory left behind in the ruins of their homes.
Hundreds of thousands of people across northern Iraq are fleeing ethnic cleansing by the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS or IS) and bloodshed in Syria has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people and driven 9.35 million people from their homes. These numbers are made up of innocent men, women and children, including those who now languish in refugee camps like Zaatari.
The Australian Government’s response to this refugee crisis has been to spends millions of dollars on offshore processing, subjecting asylum seekers to humiliating treatment, in a deliberate attempt to pressure them to return to their country of origin. This is regardless of whether or not they are genuine refugees.
It would be nice to be able to welcome Thursday’s announcement by the Australian Government highlighting the 4000 refugee places under a ‘Special Humanitarian Program’ (SHP) available to offshore applicants. But this ‘announcement’ is not actually providing extra places for refugees, as the statement would suggest, but instead simply restating the governments policy that it will will resettle 4000 people, globally each year, under its SHP. The Iraqi and Syrian Christians mentioned will still have to be sponsored by close family members in Australia. Yet how many of those fleeing the current violence have close family members here?
Compare this to the fact that Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are currently supporting more than 2 million refugees that have crossed their borders in the past two years. Meanwhile, Australia committed to providing just 13,500 spaces for its entire humanitarian program in 2013/14, actually reducing the intake from the previous year. The Australian government has the capacity to increase this, to at the very least, the previous 20,000 places.
If you’re undecided about this, I’m sure what we can agree on is that like my own children, the kids in Zaatari, still playing in their makeshift playground in the dirt, deserve a safe place they can call home.
Dr Graham Thom is the Refugee Campaign Coordinator at Amnesty International.
Top Comments
How sad for these children and families. It breaks my heart. I think about my own kids, if someone were to hit them like this...and with a gun to the head!! Pisses me off!! Someone needs to help them!
I can understand that for many Australians, there is a certain fear around new arrivals. Our country and life experience is so different to theirs, and it's easy to fall into thinking such as 'will they bring their wars and violence to our shores'; 'will they bring their religions that feed their hate of us', etc. But I reflect on a really profound piece of wisdom that was taught to me once - We teach people how to treat us. Through our actions and communication, we shape the sort of relationship we have with people. Now, from a refugee's perspective, we are a country with a great big sign on it saying 'Keep Out; We don't want you'. Then there is a lot of ignorance and missunderstanding in the community that breeds fear, such as believing that all muslims are terrorists, etc. It's no wonder many cultural sub-populations keep to themselves and don't integrate much. Imagine if our country's message was 'We'll help; we will care for you as one of our own', and the community response was one of openness and willingness to understand and empathise. I know there would still be some extremists, a few rotten apples that seem hell-bent on spoiling the barrel. Such is human nature. But I truly believe that we could have a safer, happier and more close-knit Australia if we were more mindful of how we are teaching our new arrivals to treat us. After all, you can't blame a dog for biting if all you've ever done is hit it with a stick.
Vanessa, When i was living in europe . the europeans lay out the welcome mat. They were provided with housing, free healthcare, free education, family reunification. There was nothing they could not have done. In Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and France in return that hospitality there suburbs were destroyed. ( there are now 751 urban sensible zones now) which are so violent the police, ambulances, and postmen will not enter these suburbs, neither to they work. No matter which way try and couch it. There is no evidence to suggest they will not do the same thing here. The Lebanese and Sudanese have been difficult enough to integrate why do we need more of these people. The best indicate of future behavior is past behavior. Are you really so sure the societies they recreate everywhere they go isn't just some bizarre chain of coincidences. Its the people. 96 percent of refugees are on centrelink after five years,What benefits do we get from having them here.What skills, creativity and business and industry experience do they have.