Refugees searching for hope

EVERY weekend, Zia and Hussain meet up at Spring Gully Recreation Reserve for a game of five-a-side soccer with other Hazara men in Bendigo.

It provides some brief joy amid the ongoing struggle of becoming a permanent resident.

“The time we came in 2012 it was just, four people, five and they’ve been growing very slowly,” Hussain said.

It is estimated that Bendigo has welcomed 150 people from Afghanistan, including 26 families of five or six and 30 to 35 single males.

They are Hazaras, an ethnic group of Afghanistan who have faced decades of abuse, discrimination and genocide, and have fled to countries like Australia for safety, and a future for their families.

Zia has been on a Safe Haven Enterprise Visa since 2016, a five-year visa that expires in five months.

He came to Bendigo in July 2017, as SHEV holders can only apply for the visa in select regional parts of Victoria.

The process of bridging visas, which allow refugees to stay in Australia while applying for a longer visa, can leave people stranded with no rights for a whole year.

“Once you’ve got a bridging visa after six months when it expires, you apply for another one,” Hussain said.

“The other one took maybe a year to get another six months. During that year you don’t have Medicare, you have no accessible nothing … I try to not get sick.”

The two men haven’t seen their wives or families for ten years.

Zia said for Afghanistan refugees to be granted permanent residency and bring their families to Australia, they must have qualifications.

For non-English speaking people with no money and no access to TAFE programs, this process is nearly impossible.

“In Afghanistan, if people study as engineers or doctors, when they come to Australia the qualification is not recognised here,” Zia said. “They don’t accept Afghanistan universities. You have to do it all over again.”

Rural Australians for Refugees Bendigo convenor Christine Cummins, who worked for five years as a torture and trauma counsellor on Christmas Island said over the years the Australian governments have done more to punish refugees than help them.

“The department over the years has frozen any processing. A lot of this action is purely to punish desperate people, it’s punitive, for no other reason than to punish people for having to dare to seek asylum,” she said.

Groups such as RAR Bendigo provide support for the Hazara men, holding monthly rallies and pushing for change.

This year’s Refugee Week, which starts on Friday will see a number of events and information sessions around the theme of celebrating unity.

“Some of the refugees, you can see they can make something different in Australia and over the world,” Hussain said.

“We didn’t come here to take someone’s place. I think Australia would be a better place if every other nationality can come here and live peacefully and contribute.”