Transcript

Teacher:
Why do you guys think it’s important to learn about refugees and asylum seekers?

Student:
It’s important to actually understand that they’re just like us and they’re not terrorists or anything like that so that way we can have a better functioning society because we accept them and we’re more empathetic towards what they’ve been through.

Teacher:
Yeah.

Music

Student:
The war started in Iraq everything started changing. The sounds of the guns and the explosions that happened every day.

Student:
They were killing people because of many things because of religion. You don’t know walking down the street that a C4 grenade, you’re going to die.

Woman:
Life was dark and there was no hope for the future. You did not know if your father or your mother will return when they go out.

Student:
There was a lot of fighting, bombings everywhere and so we had to immediately leave.

Narrator:
A refugee is someone who has been forced to leave their home country because they experienced persecution on the basis of their religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group.

Student:
We lost our parents over there and I had to run with my three brothers and one sister.

Principal:
Some of them have seen their parents murdered. They may have been tortured or imprisoned. They may have been raped.

Music

Narrator:
Refugees and migrants are different. Refugees are forced to leave their home country but migrants choose to leave.

Student:
Migrants just move to another place because they, maybe the economy has problems in their country so they just move to a better place.

Narrator:
Unlike refugees, migrants have time to prepare to leave, to say goodbye, to plan their journey and to organise their belongings.

Student:
My family came to Australia as migrants from New Zealand and they came here to get more opportunities.

Narrator:
Migration is usually about searching for a better life or a different experience.

Student:
My family came here by choice but asylum seekers come here because they have to come here and they’re like condemned for coming on a boat when really they’re just trying to seek asylum and be safe.

Woman:
People who seek asylum arrive either two ways, there’s the infamous boat arrivals that come via Christmas Island. But the majority of the people who seek asylum actually arrive by plane and come into Australia on a valid visa such as a student visa or a tourist visa and then whilst here seek protection from the Australian Government.

Narrator:
Everyone who claims asylum is an asylum seeker until they have been recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR or by the government of another country.

Music

Man:
I was not thinking like one day I will move from Congo, I was working as mining engineer. I used to earn a lot of money.

Student:
It’s because of political reasons they had to flee from the war that started between the Kasaians and  Katanga peoples.

Man:
The outsiders they sent some politicians to tell them, people of Katanga, you don’t have any position in your own land, it’s only those people from Kasai who have all of those positions, which was a general panic, people started to kill each other from that time. My life it was not really safe. The same people they started to shoot them. They all take that land.

Student:
2007 the war got worse there when my Dad goes to work, we don’t know if he is coming back or not. My aunty was pregnant at the same time and her husband was killed. This was very hard moment.

Student:
I have some friends that got killed. They were going to uni so they just went to them, talked with them, ‘Show me your ID’. They saw his ID, it was Christian student, they killed him, one shot into the head. We decided to leave Iraq.

Student:
The military regime destroyed my home village.

Man:
The Karang people are struggling for their self-determination since 1949 and that created a kind of civil war.

Student:
Land grabbing, shooting, killing and that’s why I had to flee.

Music

Man:
Afghan society are divided on ethnic basis among the conservatives, the religious people against more progressive and more secular people. My father was a religious person. My brothers they were more secular, which brought a lot of hardship on our family especially during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, all the Jihadis and extremist religious elements came to Afghanistan. My brother was kidnapped, tortured and he was sent to exile.

Woman:
I hear these stories from my parents that there was a knock on the door, somebody came in, then they told them you have to leave this country because you don’t belong here, your ancestors are Iranian and you have to go to Iran. At that time Saddam Hussein was like a dictator, you couldn’t say anything. My Dad and my Mum and my oldest sister they dropped them off on the Iranian-Iraqi border.

Man:
The decision for me to leave Afghanistan wasn’t my decision, it was my parents decision and at that time in 1999 the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan. Hazaras are minority Shiite Muslims, the Taliban are predominantly Sunni Muslims. They were targeting young guys who could fight against them.

Woman:
When I was in Afghanistan I was hearing all these bomb blasts and my father, he came home and then he just told my mother ‘We are leaving Afghanistan’. I just remember that my father sold everything that we had and he just said one night ‘Okay, we are going’. We didn’t know where we are going.

Student:
In Afghanistan or Pakistan if the Taliban gets you, if they catch that you’re not wearing a burqa, something on your head they’re just going to take you. They’re going to tell you to sit down and they’re just going to shoot you in the head and bang.