A Friend and former Villawood Detention Centre detainee has starred in a play
depicting a patchwork of true stories relating to the plight of refugees in Australia. His performance, which took place
on October 29th, 2004 at Wollongong Universtiy, was both heartfelt and professional. CONGRATULATIONS!
The Alabaddy family, who had previously faced hardships and torment
in Australian detention prisons, have been granted permanent residency in New Zealand. :-)
A Villawood quilt has been completed by Vivi Martin, a regular visitor to this detention
centre. She has attempted to put these stories into a visual construction, mainly using iron-on or glue-on fabrics with
embroidery. Other squares have been written or drawn in permanent ink by the detainees themselves.
One of the squares was drawn by a refugee who decided to take voluntary deportation
to Syria. Even though he was from Iraq his wife and children had been 3 years in Syria during his 3 year detention in
Australia. DIMIA say that Australia shouldnt accept refugees who have the alternative of staying in a third
country, for Iraqis this meant Syria. Within 2 weeks of arriving in Syria this man was notified by the authorities that
he was to be deported back to Iraq - just before the war! And in any event he would face again the very reasons that
made him flee in the first place.
In September 2002 two of the quilts travelled to Geneva with a delegation of lawyers
to the UNHCR Executive Committee to put forward a paper on the root causes of refugee flows. Our quilts were displayed
to show some of the responses in Australia to treatment of asylum seekers.
If we could ever trust that this invasion was for anything other than oil ....we just hope for peace not pieces.
