THINKING OF SPECIAL WOMEN ON INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY (Sharing thoughts from Pamela Curr, Refugee Rights Co-ordinator, ASRC) On this International Women’s Day, I am remembering just a few of the brave, heroic, resourceful women I have met in the past year ... Women like ARIA* who kept her 3 children safe in a cellar in Damascus amidst bombing & shooting until they took their chance in the back of a van crossing the city to the airport where they scrambled aboard one of the last flights out. Having never left her country, she found her way across the world to a fishing boat on an Indonesian beach with her 3 children, her father & sister. What singles this brave young mother out is her resourcefulness in keeping her 8 year old daughter with profound autism alive through the crush of bodies, the noise & chaos which is so painful to anyone with autism. Brave women like the 2 SISTERS who brought their elderly mother out of the hell of an Afghan massacre. One sister saw her husband killed & children taken. Their elderly mother could barely walk. We met them in detention as they waited & hoped for freedom. Finally they were released. The elderly mother died 2 weeks later. As they stood in the cold wind at the cemetery burying their mother, hundreds of their compatriots quietly gathered beside them. People they did not know nor had ever met came to pay their respects to the elderly mother who reached freedom because her 2 daughters brought her across the seas against all the odds. Heroic young women like KALA* who with her husband boarded a boat last year, only to spend 7 hours in the water after it sank. She held her 18 month old baby son all this time until they were rescued. By then, the little boy was dead. She never saw him again after handing him to the Indonesian authorities. 2 days after arriving on Christmas Island, the Australian authorities transferred this grieving young couple to Nauru where they slept in a communal tent where their sadness was for all to see. She waits now for another baby to arrive but her heart is heavy for the little boy lost. SARAs house was taken by militants because it stood strategically high in the mountain village. Her husband had no chance of living if he challenged the armed men firing from their roof. The neighbours gathered in their basement, waiting for a break in fighting, to escape. Their country in northern Lebanon has been taken over by marauding bands of militants fighting in the Syrian conflict. Their jobs are gone. Daily life is a risk & struggle for survival. After days of this hell, their moment came. The families carried their youngest & instructed the older children to run at the given signal. As they ran down the hill, unbelievably the militants started firing after them. Sara’s 6 year old daughter saw her playmate’s body explode in her father’s arms as a shell ripped through her. Sara grabbed her screaming girl & pulled her down the hill. They escaped. Months later in an Australian detention centre, this young mother sits & rocks her daughter through the sleepless nights induced by memories of horror past. These are just a few of the remarkable women I have met this past year. Women whose bravery & resolve to survive has been sorely tested first by the violence from which they have fled & then by the complacent cruelty of a wealthy, politically stable country that chooses to punish them for having the guts & will to survive. There but for the grace of the universe go I. [* real names not used to protect privacy]
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 08:08:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015