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AUSTRALIA: Sudan Survivors Lost in Their New Home

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Mar 14 2007 (IPS) - While Australia magnanimously accepted large numbers of young Sudanese, who survived one of the most vicious wars of the last century, many have serious adjustment problems in their new home.

In recent years, Sudanese nationals – mainly from the Christian south – have become the largest beneficiaries of Australia’s offshore humanitarian programme which grants permanent visas under the ‘refugee’ and ‘special humanitarian programme’ (SHP) categories.

Since 2002-2003, a total of 19,401 visas were granted to Sudanese refugees and an estimated 24,000 people of Sudanese origin now live in Australia – often drawing negative media attention.

A brawl in January in which one man was stabbed at a Sudanese community beauty pageant in Melbourne received wide media coverage. Recently there was controversy surrounding the settlement of Sudanese refugee families in the town of Tamworth. Following an outcry over the Tamworth Regional Council’s initial rejection of the refugees, the Council decided, in January, to accept them on a trial basis.

Akoc Manheim, 24, arrived in Australia in 2003 after spending five years in a Kenyan refugee camp set up for those fleeing the fighting in southern Sudan. During the 21-year civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south an estimated two million lives were lost before peace was finally signed in January 2005.

Like many other southern Sudanese who fled in order to avoid conscription, Manheim arrived in Kenya without his parents. Security was a problem. “The local people who were living there around that refugee camp, they would come and loot the food that was provided by the United Nationsàthere were many people that died because of that,” Manheim told IPS.

Manheim believes that building up the local Sudanese community is one answer. ‘’In our traditional education we say that when a lion chases you, run to the community. People can help you and kill the lion. What is the lion? It is our poverty and our problems back home,” says Manheim, now director of the Sudanese Lost Boys Association of Australia, a major support group.

While Sudanese are regarded as causing more problems than other immigrant groups, few here realise that these are young people who have undergone immense trauma and hardships. Most are orphans who survived onslaughts on their villages by government troops only because they were away tending herds or managed to hide. Many reached international refugee camps set up in Ethiopia and Kenya after battling starvation, disease and wild animals.

There are few ‘lost girls’ because most were at home when the troops arrived and were raped and killed or taken away to become servants in northern Sudan. Or the girls did not survive the hardships along the way.

One cause of friction with local Australians is the poor English language skills of the young refugees, says Gatwech Puoch, a migrant attached to the Southeast Region Migrant Resource Centre. Puoch, who received English language instruction at a university in Sudan, says that while children under 15 adapt and learn English quickly, the older refugees find the going harder.

Older refugees are also likely to have other difficulties in adjusting to their new environment. ‘’Those who are over 15 years typically come from a background of interrupted education àthese are now the people who are having a lot of problems finding employment in Australia,” Puoch told IPS.

‘’These people need to be encouraged because of their inability in coping with the language and adult education programmes. That’s why there are a lot of them staying at railway stations, because they don’t have other options,” says Puoch.

The Australian government, through its Adult Migrant English Programme provides newly-arrived migrants and humanitarian entrants with 510 hours of free English tuition. In January, Prime Minister John Howard used a citizenship ceremony to repeat his call for migrants to learn English.

But Puoch argues that 510 hours of tuition is insufficient. “You need to talk to other people (in English), you have to communicate with the surrounding people. But, when they are out of the classroom they don’t have any interaction with the local community,” he says.

Archangelo Madut who fled Sudan at eight, staying in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda before arriving in Australia, is now a counsellor at Foundation House in Melbourne, part of the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture. He says 510 hours of tuition “can be enough for people who have a previous background in English, but if you’re starting completely from zero, that is not enough.”

Sudanese migrants face many hurdles in their new lives in Australia. “The past still affects many. You will find here individuals whose entire families were wiped out in the war. Life may be good here but the past will haunt you. You will be in class thinking of what you went through sometimes,” says Madut.

Some members of the Sudanese community have lived in refugee camps for 20 years. “They will not be okay in an environment where other persons are okay,” says Madut. “What they went through, what they experienced in the campsàall this has an impact.”