World Refugee Day ....THIS SUNDAY 22nd

Yep I'm back on the Refugee bandwagon!....

As most of you probably know, for the last year and a bit Andrew and I have been working as volunteer tutors/ community support with a family from Afghanistan. This Sunday there will celebrations for World Refugee Day from 9am to 4pm at the Annerley soccer fields near Juliette and Ridge streets, Annerley.

The day is being organized by the group who we tutor through i.e. VoRTCS. On offer on the day will be music, markets, a soccer and volleyball competition, cultural and art exhibitions and no doubt some pretty interesting food.


If you have any free time on Sunday, it would be great if you could come along and show your support for refugees in our community. Andrew and I will be heading over there about 11am - hopefully with some of the members of our Afghan family.

If you want to meet up on the day, just give me a call/ text.

Hope

Today I saw a movie.

http://www.hopedocumentary.com.au/hope/index.htm


It was a documentary. A tragic story about Hope.






It was about Amal. Her name means hope - but it should, and will now, be synonymous with courage.




Amal Basry watched The Titanic at a cinema in Baghdad the night before she fled Iraq. 18 months later the people smuggling boat she was on sank between Indonesia and Australia. 353 people drowned. Amal survived by clinging to the floating body of a dead woman for 22 hours. Now Amal fights to ensure that the disaster is not forgotten, reunite her family and 'find what it was I lost in the ocean'.

I do not remember this tragedy. If I did, I would have only remembered it as 'another lot of asylum seekers' trying to get to Australia.

I am now ashamed of my own narrow-mindedness.

I don't know alot about asylum seekers, refugees, illegal imigrants - but I know more that I used to - and I have Andrew to thank for my new-found awareness of social justice issues.

For your interest, from reading the VORTCS site (our refugee tutoring association) -

1) Because boat arrivals receive much publicity, it is often thought that the number of asylum seekers entering Australia is increasing. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, the number of asylum applications lodged in Australia decreased from 12,366 in 2001 to 5,766 in 2002.

2) Australia received fewer asylum applications than just about any other similar country between 1997 and 2003. And Australia only granted 17.8% of these asylum applications – compared with 57.8% in Canada, 34.7% in the United Kingdom and 28.8% in the United States.

3) Arriving without appropriate papers should not be interpreted as an attempt to defraud the system. By definition, refugees and asylum seekers are people who are at risk of persecution, most often from their government. Applying for a passport and/or an exit visa can be far too dangerous for some refugees; so too can be an approach to an Australian Embassy for a visa. These actions can put their lives, and those of their families, at risk. In such cases refugees may have to travel on forged documents or bypass regular migration channels and arrive without papers. In other situations, refugees have to flee immediately and do not have the opportunity to gather the correct paperwork before they leave their homes.

Today I saw a movie.

I didn't enjoy it - instead I was moved to tears.

And I thought how lucky I am!