Pittwater Life January 2024 Issue

News
‘Lucky’ refugees’ stories told
Journalist Melinda Ham – Canadianborn
but now living on Scotland Island
for the past 20 years – has been
a passionate refugee advocate since she
was a student in Montreal and London,
and a foreign correspondent in Malawi
and Zambia.
Since migrating to Australia in 1994,
while working as a journalist, she has also
tutored many refugees and addressed Rotary
Clubs and other voluntary groups to
put the record straight above the contribution
refugees continue to make to Australian
society, despite the negative press.
Now she has written The Lucky Ones
which makes her case from the interwoven
stories of six refugee families who
arrived here between 1948 and 2019 in
different circumstances.
She said each of the families had
survived unspeakable torture or abuse
of human rights at the hands of some
of the most murderous regimes of the
20th and 21st centuries: Hitler, Stalin,
Mobutu, Ho Chi Minh, the Taliban and
then Islamic State.
One refugee recounted being thrown
into a rat-infested cell. Others were
starved. Deprived of medical care. Denied
access to their families or international
rights organisations. Persecuted
for simply having “the wrong religion, or
ethnic background.
In The Lucky Ones Melinda chose to
focus on families, rather than just men:
“Women deserve to be present in the
narrative.”
Australia adopted the White Australia
Policy at the same time as Federation in
1901. By the time Polish Catholics Maria
and Wojciech arrived on a ship from
Genoa Italy, Prime Minister Arthur Caldwell’s
slogan was “populate or perish”.
The refugee families come from a wide
geographical area: Poland, Vietnam,
Tibet, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. However,
the way their ordeals, escapes and arrival
in Australia share the same traits
PASSIONATE: Scotland Island
refugee advocate Melinda Ham.
makes for a gripping if harrowing
history.
Melinda began researching
The Lucky Ones in 2018, but
postponed it during the COVID-19 lockdown:
“You can’t do these interviews by
Zoom. They have to be face to face, over
many cups of tea.”
Originally her own story wasn’t included.
“The publishers insisted. I wasn’t
keen. But it explains why I came to write
the book.”
Beginning with student advocacy,
Melinda’s passion for refugees deepened
during the six years she spent in Malawi
and Zambia, from 1989. “Five million
Mozambicans were displaced during the
civil war by the Mozambican National
Resistance rebels,” she explains.
“They fled to Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
One million were killed.”
The Vietnamese refugees, Kasse and
Minh, arrived in Indonesia by boat and
then were processed by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) and permitted to come to Australia.
But this was during Liberal Prime
Minister Malcolm Fraser’s time at The
Lodge when they were welcomed.
More than 30 years later Imtiaz, from
Afghanistan, was poised to board a boat
in Malaysia after his mother Nikmorgh
had paid “thousands of dollars to people
smugglers” for him to make the perilous
crossing. Fortunately the
boat was intercepted
by police. Being a
minor, Imtiaz was
handed over to
the UNHCR which
arranged for his
legitimate transfer to
Australia.
What does Melinda
hope to gain from
the publication of her
book?
“The Lucky Ones
equips the (nonrefugee)
Australian
with background and
knowledge about what
it has taken the refugees
to get to Australia, settle here and
make a success of their lives. It enables
the reader to walk beside them in their
journey and hopefully feel more compassion
and understanding about what they
have experienced.
“I hope my book will put a human face
on the plight of more 35 million refugees
around the world waiting for countries
like Australia to take them in.
“Most who come here are hard-working
and make a success of it because of
where they have come from and their
background of poverty and hardship.
Their children work hard too.
“Refugees can be a huge bonus to a
country like ours, especially when we
have a labour and skills crisis.”
– Steve Meacham
*More info affirmpress.com.au
6 JANUARY 2024
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