Researching Histories of Child Refugees in Australia

the research team at work

Photographs, favours and mango leaves.

Each time I set out to collect an oral history I prepare for an adventure, not only because of the narrative that awaits my attention but also the excitement of travelling to the interview location and observing the setting.  Why is the interview setting or sense of place important in collecting oral history?

I often find myself travelling far into the East or West of Melbourne and Sydney to do my interviews with Tamils, often in their homes.  The narratives I listen to are fascinating tales of heroism, courage, pain, anger, progress and change.  And yet, during these narratives I always find myself pausing to observe my surroundings such as paintings on the living room wall, the small statues of elephants and wedding favours (usually miniature statues of gods and goddesses) stacked neatly in a glass cabinet and colourful cushions with saree print borders.  Sometimes I am also alerted to the hospitality of family members who insist I drink coffee and tea, or eat lunch before I leave the house.

When we think of oral histories we tend not to think of the interview setting or the surroundings that can provide key links between the past and present.  However, when oral histories are the main source of information about the Tamil people’s past, the kinds of clues from the interview setting mentioned above can help to better understand the individual and their narrative.

Here is an example from my research diary:

After one and a half hours on Melbourne’s suburban train line I arrived at the final station signalled by its open plains and sprouting development sites cascaded with modern architecture, where I was greeted by a Tamil woman named Tharshi* who had agreed to share with me her childhood memories.  Tharshi drove me from the train station to her house, identifying local amenities along the way such as the shopping mall, local Tamil school which her children and nephews attended, post office, primary school and fish market.  She also states that she usually works on Saturday but took the day off to take the children to Tamil language exams.  Approximately ten minutes later her car pulls into the driveway of a newly built house, at first appearing identical to the others but on closer observation revealed distinct markers of Tamilness: a large sandstone Ganesh statue centres the front yard, several varieties of roses frame the front fence and dried mango leaves are hung on a string across the top of the front door.  Inside, the walls of the house are neatly scattered with several family photos of her family and relatives as well as paintings and prints of Hindu gods and goddesses.  The interview takes place in the formal living room, away from the weekend noise, where she tells me that she is living in a koottukudumbam (a common living arrangement among Tamils whereby immediate and extended families live together), a childhood wish of hers fulfilled at last she tells me.  As I observed my surroundings it occurred to me that the visible markers of family and religion were at once a comfort and piercing reminder of the pain of family separation and faith that Tharshi experienced throughout her childhood.

 

*Pseudonym

I didn’t see the footprints: memorials for children in Bosnia and Hercegovina

“The footprints! They’re all over the fountain. They make my heart break.”
“I didn’t see them”.

I was in Sarajevo, Bosnia, to attend a summer school called “Learning from the past: transitional justice”. The footprints were part of a memorial to children killed during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992-1995. I was at the summer school because I wanted to learn more about the people I interview for my PhD – survivors of the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, who moved to Australia when they were children.

memorial to children sarajevo2
Memorial for children killed during the siege of Sarajevo 1992-1995

I had visited the memorial and seen the fountain and the accompanying scrolls with the names of the children. I had turned the scrolls repeatedly, thinking about which ethnic group most of the children were from. In doing so, I had unconsciously fallen in to the trap of nationalist memorialisation and ethnic segregation that is common in so many monuments throughout Bosnia.

My visit to the fountain – and the fact I read the scrolls but missed the footprints – made me think about the ways in which children’s experiences are remembered and interpreted. What are we looking for when we visit children’s memorials? Why are children memorialised and not their adult family members who may well have died alongside them?

scrolls sarajevo.jpg
Scrolls with the names of children killed during the siege

When I returned to the monument a second time to see the footprints, I found myself thinking not of the children who died, but those who survived by leaving Sarajevo, including those who left on foot through Sarajevo’s Tunnel of Hope.

The most well-known example of a child refugee from Sarajevo is Zlata Filipović, who kept a diary of her family’s experiences before they fled Sarajevo for Paris in 1993, when Zlata was 13 years old. Zlata described scenes of children leaving Sarajevo and Zenica (a city one hour from Sarajevo):

Friday 3 April 1992
Daddy came back from Zenica all upset. He says there are terrible crowds at the train and bus stations. People are leaving Sarajevo. Sad scenes. They’re the people who believe the misinformation. Mothers and children are leaving, the fathers are staying behind, or just children are leaving, while their parents stay. Everybody is in tears. Daddy says he wishes he hadn’t seen that.” Zlata’s Diary, 1993, pp28-29

My thoughts turned to the child refugees – now adults – I am interviewing all the way on the other side of the world, in Australia. Many of them would have been part of the terrible crowds at train and bus stations described by Zlata.

The footsteps made me think of one of my interviewees, Emina (a pseudonym) who described the loss of her connection with her home city and her sadness over her relationship with Sarajevo today. Despite knowing that she was a child when she left, she feels survivor guilt that she and her family escaped while others stayed through the hardships of the siege.

Unlike the children represented by this fountain, Emina obviously survived. Yet such a memorial is intended to only speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Can there ever be room for stories and losses like Emina’s in such monuments?

20160628_182227
Footprints in the memorial to children killed during the siege of Sarajevo

‘Never had a chance’ – child refugees and health in postwar Australia

Standards of care that exist for child refugees within a receiving country are integral to their successful settlement. And yet, specific questions regarding health and wellbeing have rarely been considered in histories of migration to Australia, despite the obvious trauma and subsequent physical ailments that can afflict those fleeing from their homes. How has Australia historically dealt with the health of child refugees? I am specifically interested in how these needs were met (or not) within the government-administered space of the ‘Reception and Processing Centre’. As part of my upcoming book on Bonegilla Centre, I explore the controversial deaths of twelve babies at Bonegilla in 1949. My aim here is to link it to wider discourses around the immigration scheme, standards of care afforded to refugees, and the responsibilities of receiving countries.

Eureka Henrich’s new research on the health beliefs and practices of post-war migrants reveals that many brought health supplies with them. Pregnant women packed bandages and ointments in preparation for birth; mothers concealed treatments and foodstuffs for their children. Distrust of the state, and a general uncertainty about what Australia had to offer, surrounded these decisions to bring health supplies. Little information was given about their settlement situation.

In September 1949, a ‘health scare’ at Bonegilla became public news. Twelve young children had died of malnutrition over a ten-week period. Twenty-five others remained gravely ill. A media storm descended on Bonegilla and the Department of Immigration. Before this time, little attention had been paid to the centre. Bonegilla was intentionally placed was out of sight and out of mind, so as not to arouse a public backlash against the mass post-war immigration scheme. Nothing like it had been attempted in Australia’s history: the reception and accommodation of hundreds and thousands of new arrivals, all from non-English speaking countries. Bonegilla itself was a former military establishment, barely suited for accommodating older children, let alone babies.

Bon Migrant Camp Planning Advisory Council

Immigration Advisory Council Officials visiting Bonegilla, 1951, NAA: 1/1951/20/16

So much had been invested in selling the wider immigration scheme to the public and in assuring them of the health and vitality of those first Displaced Persons (DPs) from war-torn Europe. The revelation of child deaths by malnutrition shocked many. Editorials and letters expressed outrage and condemnation toward the government. The level of care given to vulnerable DPs, which was made especially evocative through images of malnourished (and ethnically acceptable) Baltic children, concerned the Australian public.

A reporter asked whether the Australian Department of Immigration and the Health Department ‘were absolved from contributory causes to these child migrant deaths’; a Health Department officer replied: ‘We hope so, but we do not know’ (5 Sep 1949, Northern Star). The initial unpreparedness of the government was quickly replaced by a terse defensiveness. The federal inquiry into the deaths found that while Bonegilla’s conditions were inadequate for children, their deaths could be blamed on gastro-enteritis caused by a poor ship-board diet. The report also noted that Bonegilla hospital was only partly equipped and grossly understaffed.

Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, used the child deaths as a means to promote his vision for the immigration scheme and assure Australians of its humanitarian (rather than its primary labour) aims:

The deaths are tragic reminders of the conditions of privation under which children are still forced to live in war-devastated Europe … [They] should encourage Government to redouble efforts to bring to Australia as many as possible of these innocent victims of war’s cruel aftermath (Calwell, 7 September 1949).

The wide-open spaces, warm Australian sunshine, and ‘plentiful and nutritious’ food on offer at Bonegilla would remedy these cases, he implied. Australia was not only boosting its population and economy; it was saving ‘the innocent victims of war’. The children who perished in 1949, however, ‘never had a chance’ (Bonegilla medical officer, in: Kalgoorlie Miner, 6 September 1949). The media were banned from entering Bonegilla after 5 September. Increasingly, government spokespersons blamed the IRO. Calwell asserted that ‘the migrant from Europe becomes the responsibility of the Australian Government only from the time of arrival to Australia’, despite being selected and sponsored by the Australian government.

To a contemporary audience, the government response and media furore also feels gravely familiar. To be sure, contemporary cases that come to light of poor conditions, abuse, self-harm and suicide by asylum seekers in indefinite detention are qualitatively different from this Bonegilla case study. However, government and individual politicians’ responses feel remarkably similar—particularly for their steadfast ability to hide, conceal, screen-out scrutiny, and deflect blame. The influence of public shock and media furore in arousing reactive policy decisions is also telling. In this example, and in subsequent controversies in Australian immigration history, it often takes shocking or even fatal incidences to rouse public attention—and when this attention is roused, the response from those in power can be short-term, reactionary, or pre-empt a media lock-down to conceal victims from sight.

‘special attention’ on refugee children

In 1994 the UNHCR released a document entitled Refugee Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care. This document – which updated a 1988 document, and incorporated ideas from a UNHCR policy document produced in 1993 – remains the standard set of guidelines for protection regimes and measures for refugee children from the UNHCR. All of the UNHCR publications on child refugees begin by pointing out that approximately half of any refugee population are children, and this document is no different. It’s an interesting point to make, and to be continually reminding people of. We are compelled to wonder, I think, why the typical refugee is imagined as being an adult. Why do we refer to refugees and child refugees? How does adulthood become instilled as the norm? Of course, this is not a problem peculiar to refugees: in general, when discussions of society are at hand, adults are considered to norm, and their adulthoodness (if such a word can be allowed!) is invisible.

 

This 1994 document opens with a preface by Sadako Ogata, the then-UN High Commissioner for Refugees. One of the first things she wrote here was that “Refugee children are children first and foremost, and as children, they need special attention” (p. 5).

 

This line jumps out at me, as I think through the ways that the category of the child refugee has been produced at different historical moments. What does it mean to be a child “first and foremost”? How can that be evaluated and determined? The way in which this is written seems to produce an idea of a universal child who is always one thing. Indeed, Ogata goes on to explain that “children are vulnerable… children are dependent… children are developing” (p. 5-6). Are all children all of these things, all the time? In this framing, are children constituted by having these qualities, or are these qualities constituted by being carried by the children? And can one be a considered a child if they are not all these things?

 

The document is framed by the ideas of childhood presented in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and it notes that “the CRC’s major innovation is that it gives rights to children. We are used to thinking of children as having needs that should be met, rather than as having legal rights” (p. 20). The key framing for these rights is that activities should be done which are in the “best interests of the child” – this formulation is key to much of the way that the UN, the UNHCR and international law currently approaches understandings of best practice around policies towards child refugees. Again, however, we are compelled to inquire what precisely this can mean, and has meant, and indeed, what the precise ways are in which this formulation has been put into practice changes over time and place. It is always historical, drawing on communal ideas of both “best interest” and of “the child”.

 

Human rights lawyer John Tobin has argued for “a vision beyond vulnerability” when thinking about the concept of children’s rights. He has written that focusing on the vulnerability of children can “lead to their objectification and silencing. Even with the best of intentions, children can easily become objects of concern and intervention by adults who are committed to their best interests without bothering to consult with children about these interventions” (p. 171). In such approaches, he writes, children “are presumed to lack the competency and capacity to assist in the design and development of any measures or interventions to ensure their effective protection” (p. 171).

 

Is this perhaps what we’re seeing being instilled in the idea put forward by the UNHCR, and by Ogata, that refugee children are children. How then does this sit alongside the work of the children currently imprisoned in the Australian detention centre on Nauru, who present images such as this one

children on Nauru

(from Free the Children NAURU, posted August 29, 2016, accessed August 31, 2016.)

and who protest and assert their own calls for rights, justice, freedom and self-determination? In this work they produce an alternate idea of what the category of the child can contain, and how it can be politically mobilised at this historical moment in the work towards attaining children’s rights. The “special attention” which these children demand is of a fundamentally different order.

‘Welcome to Australia’ reading images of refugees

Benjamin Thomas White’s lucid examinations of historical and contemporary images of refugees clearly demonstrates the complexities of reading images and the importance of historical analysis. (You can read them here: part one, two, three, and refugee camps.) Given how readily images, particularly photographs, populate our physical and digital worlds, it is through a detailed historical analysis of images that we can better understand the place of the visual in making, and remaking, social and political meaning.

Professor James Grossman (Executive Director of the American Historical Association) said in the Los Angeles Times that ‘Everything has a history. To think historically is to recognize that all problems, all situations, and all institutions exist in contexts that must be understood before informed decisions can be made.’ Here he’s talking about how valuable people with history majors are in workplaces. This is entirely right. In addition, we also need these skills in daily life, and reading images is one place where understanding context is crucial.

When researching how the Australian government has photographed arrivals of displaced people, I found this photograph of five women in Hungarian national dress, on hand to welcome what was called the first ‘freedom flight’ that brought refugees to Australia after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The women surround the Minister for Immigration, Athol Townley, at Sydney airport, awaiting the the Qantas Super Constellation aircraft that carried 83 Hungarian refugees.

ShowImage.asp-3
Refugee Arrivals in Australia, 3 December 1956, Sydney, National Archives of Australia, A12111, 1/1956/5/1

I first saw this photo about the same time I was also reading Robert Dixon’s excellent article ‘Citizens and asylum seekers, emotional literacy, rhetorical leadership and human rights’. In this article Dixon focuses on what has become known as the ‘children overboard’ affair – in which during the federal election campaign in 2001 the Australian government used Navy photographs (of asylum seekers being rescued by Navy personal while the boat they had been on was sinking) to make public claims that adults seeking asylum in Australia were throwing children overboard as a tactic to force them to be brought to Australian shores (see Senate Select Committee report).

Refugee and immigration policy and practice was a feature of the election campaign and the spectre of terrorism, after the attacks in the United States on 11 September contributed to concern in the political climate. The campaign included then Prime Minister John Howard’s now well quoted statement: ‘But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.

In examining the children overboard case Dixon says it shows how ‘in the conduct and representation of public life, words and images matter…words and images used by politicians and the media…have the power to actively constitute people’s feelings and opinions, and hence their actions’ (p11). I don’t want to suggest any direct and simple comparisons between displaced Hungarians in 1956 and more recent cases of people seeking asylum in Australia – but where I do think this juxtaposition is useful is in demonstrating the ways in which government, through images and words, narrates and frames the experiences of displaced people seeking to immigrate to Australia. It is only by understanding historical contexts that the meaning and purpose of such narratives can be revealed.

Hungarian refugees who were publicly described as putting children at risk when escaping in 1956 were deemed people of ‘fine calibre’ and the Immigration Department worked hard to promote their ‘human stories’ and warmly welcomed them to Australia (see, for e.g. Press Statement Issued by the Minister for Immigration, 27 November 1956 in NAA: C3939, N1955/25/75167 PART 2) . But this was during the Cold War, and a time in which the government needed public support for its immigration program. The context today is vastly different, and ‘protect our boarders’ is the focus. This can be seen in a range of ways as Gwenda Tavan has written and is encapsulated in the name of the department that administers immigration today: the Department of Immigration and Border Security.

In thinking about the welcoming of Hungarian refugees, I do not wish to romanticise the history of Australia’s involvement with migration and displaced people (as Klaus Neumann astutely cautions against), but use it to think about how we should look at images.

ShowImage.asp-5
Immigration – Refugee arrivals in Australia, December, 1956, National Archive of Australia, series A12111, 1/1956/5/6

This is particularly significant given how easily images can be circulated in the digital age, and that for historians, to try to interpret and understand visual materials we need to examine the variety of contexts in which they were created and appear. The photograph above showing a formally arranged ‘Welcome to Australia’, like others of the Hungarian refugees’ arrival in Sydney that are more casually composed, don’t tell us so much about the refugees themselves, but reveal to us how displaced people were, and continue to be, imaged by others.

 

Tamils remember May 2009

As 18 May* is approaching I decided to write this short blog about the oral history narratives of young individuals who were involved in political campaigns which aimed to spread awareness about the plight of Tamils during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s decades long civil war.  In addition, I felt that it was important to identify that their memories and reflections were pointing to broader topics, such as a sense of belonging, that speaks to the differences and similarities which are continuously shifting the collective identity of the Tamil community in Australia.

Tamil Youth Organisation Australia
Tamil Youth Organisation – Australia 2012

The civil war in Sri Lanka and intensification of violence in 2009 are significant in the childhood memories of Tamils, as one individual said, ‘it was heightened emotions, I was very sad and angry’.  In their forced migration to Australia some Tamil children carried with them day-to-day experiences of war such as hiding in bunkers and being internally displaced for long periods of time.  For others, the war in Sri Lanka was constructed through stories told to them by family members.  Regardless of how they came to know about the civil war, their narratives show that as children they understood that the war was a part of their story.

Interviewees spoke about their emotions and drew on the opportunity to reflect on the protests and lobbying of 2009 that took place in Australia and across the world.  Many individuals felt that the efforts of Tamil organisations in Australia went in vein because people had competing views about the civil war, and more specifically the LTTE.  Upon reflecting on this, one Tamil said:

‘I think the general vibe that people got here was that a lot of the groups were pro Tiger (LTTE) which prevented some people from participating.’

The personal narratives of Tamils reveal that the final stages of the war implicated community tensions simply on account of ‘different views’.  Another person described feeling angry at people in the Tamil community who remained distant from the protests and lobbying, asserting ‘you don’t really care, you’re selfish’.  The views of Tamils show how deeply personal and complicated childhood memories of war can be, embodied by emotions linked to grief, anger and confusion, become imbued with a range of reflections and associations signifying the politics of loss.  The impacts of this are significant, particularly, when it unsettles their sense of belonging.  Nevertheless, by openly asserting their memories and reflections of May 2009, Tamils living in Australia are beginning to question and challenge the boundaries of their community.

*18 May marks the end of the armed conflict between the Sri Lanka Army and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).  Each year on this day, Tamils all over the world hold candlelight vigils and gatherings to remember the final stages of the civil war.  In Australia, ‘Tamil genocide Remembrance Day’ pays respect to civilians, fallen LTTE and those individuals from across the world who sacrificed their lives for the plight of Tamils.

 

Niro.D is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Australia.  Her thesis is on the long term resettlement experiences of Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Girl in the Picture

“Looking for this girl from the film footage , Please pass on , I would like to give her this collection of Pics & film footage. It’s part her history as well as mine.”[1]

Thuy recently sent her these posting from his Facebook page and she had not been able to respond. It just happened that she was starting a PhD based on her family history. How did this person have such information about her and she had no memory of him?

Hugh Gemmel 2015-10-30 at 4.34.30 PM posting

They met at the Ian Potter café just on the edge of Melbourne University. He was recently invited to speak about his work on secondary trauma for aid workers during the Vietnam War. She sat across from him and starred hard into his face trying to remember a trace of the familiar, but she could not. Even after their meeting, she could not piece together the memory of him. All she had to go on was what he remembered.

She had asked, “Why did you take so many pictures of me?”

He had replied, “I was relieved from the front lines to teach English to the students in the camp after the army doctor diagnosed me with shell shock. You were one of the students I shot as a part of the photography and film footage I sent home to my family. I had wanted to be a film maker, but got drafted before I had a chance to go to college.”

He sort of evaded the question. She understood this as a part of his personal history and did not press for an answer.

She asked in another way, “What were you hoping or expecting when you or if you had found me?”

He answered, “I just wanted to thank you. I had always wondered what happened to you because you were particularly bright and eager to learn. You even tried to translate for your parents whenever they wanted me to go the immigration office to ask about the status of their application. After a year in the camp, you and your family were accepted into Australia. I did not think I would ever see you and your family again until I discovered Facebook.”

She did not know where to go from there. Was he familiar with her family, would he start to ask about their whereabouts? Something about the conversation did not sit well with her. He interrupted her thoughts, “So what are you doing here in Australia now?”

“I am writing my PhD about Vietnamese settlements in Melbourne. ” she replied.

“Wow,” he gasped and turned to look off in the distance at the large elm tree planted in the middle of circle of Ecalyptus. “I hope these pictures and film will be of use to you.”

“Thank you,” she said, “I am sure that they will. I have to go to class now, but perhaps we could meet again before you return to the states?”

“Of course,” he said. She stood up to say, “goodbye,” like an outline lifting from the print of a page.

Hugh rang his wife that night to tell her that he had found the girl in the picture. The Skype connection was not clear, but he held up the picture that he had posted on Facebook five years ago. She smiled at the camera on the other end and put a finger up against the screen to trace the tears welling up on the screen.

[1] Hugh Gemmel, October 8, 2014 at 2:54pm, “Vietnamese Boat People Refugee Camp, 25 Hawkins Road, Sembawang, Singapore,” Facebook public group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/98995200578/, accessed 22 June 2015.

*This is a creative non-fiction imagined encounter based on one area of the research I am exploring. – Anh Nguyen, PhD Candidate History, University of Melbourne

Number of posts found: 17