Immigration Minister Peter Dutton visits Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan
IMMIGRATION Minister Peter Dutton has made an emotional trip to Jordan to oversee the selection of 12,000 refugees set to be resettled in Australia.
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ON HIS first visit to the Middle East as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has visited the sprawling Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan
Mr Dutton also visited the Syrian border to see at first-hand the violent civil war that has led to so many being displaced.
The minister was here to oversee the selection process for the Federal Government’s pledge of resettling 12,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
He spent much of the morning at the sprawling Za’atari refugee camp, listening to stories from aid workers and some of the 79,000 refugees and also being briefed by his department’s officials from his Syrian Refugee Resettlement Task Force led by deputy secretary Peter Vardos.
The stories were distressing, with many illuminating the frame of mind of the refugees. Hayam, a 32-year-old mother of five, told Mr Dutton she wanted to go home — now.
And not home from the medical centre where she had sat on a concrete bench patiently flanked by two wheezy boys for more than two hours, but her real home in Syria.
Mr Dutton came offering 12,000 places to resettle in Australia, but as he walked along the bustling crowded streets of the camp he heard the same message — home was where the heart was and that was not beating in a new country on the other side of the world.
“I hope to God we go back to our country and it is safe,” the minister was told flatly by Hayam, speaking through a translator.
“But what do you hope, what do you think the future holds, what opportunities for you?” Mr Dutton pressed.
“I am prepared to stay here then God willing we can go home; but what God wants.”
Outside on the dusty streets of Za’atari, Mr Dutton heard about life in the camp for the 79,333 residents, mostly Syrian refugees where an incredible 57 per cent are under the age of 18 and 20 per cent under five years, fleeing conflict. He heard particularly about the embattled city of Daraa, just a few kilometres away over the Syrian border.
Dozens of children fell into his entourage and proudly marched alongside or imitated his serious-looking security detail and he asked many of them if they attended school and some did but many others didn’t.
Mr Dutton stopped off at a bakery and bought a shopping bag of pitta bread for the equivalent of $1.60, but gave the baker three times that as a tip. He asked whether he wanted to go elsewhere. No, just Syria said the baker, who had 20 family members in his clan including teenage sons who worked for him full time and now had no time for school.
Mr Dutton complimented one woman on her home. “Well you can have it,” she told him, saying she had enough and wanted to go home.
If it was frustrating for them, it was as frustrating for Mr Dutton. But staff from UN’s refugee agency UNHCR reassured every person that wanted to go home that there was no home and renewed fighting across the border convinced them resettlement was best.
There are more than 600,000 refugees in Syria. With ISIS now moving west, many families in the camp (particularly the ones headed by just women where the husbands were killed, missing or still fighting) want to start anew for the sake of their children and potentially next generation of Syrians who may one day have a better chance of returning home.
Later on, Mr Dutton and his convoy of black Land Cruisers made for the Syrian border with the minister insistent on seeing from where the chaos came that a “compassionate Australia” was now trying to help.
By his own admission he was looking for “reinforcement” for his resettlement program and he got it.
Surrounded by a fleet of utes with mounted 50 calibre guns and dug in tanks, gun pits and heavily armed troops, Mr Dutton was taken effectively to the frontline at Tower 15 of the 1st Company, 10th battalion Jordanian Army.
Less than 100m away, Brigadier General Hasan Hayajne explained were the Free Syrian Army building two shelters from where civilians were to be evacuated to Jordan when, not if, they are wounded.
About 5km was pummeled Tal Shihab village and just 10km away was the city of Daraa where Russian and Syrian forces were just last week firing precision missiles and dropping barrel bombs on the locals and rebel fighters including Al Nusra forces.
From here Mr Dutton was told you could hear the war, cries and clashes and then see the trail of wounded refugees being stretchered the 100m across no-mans land to Jordan for treatment and refuge.
“You are the first person, our distinguished guest, to ever come here because it is dangerous,” beamed the excited general surrounded by troops who ensured the minister’s travelling party remained behind a reinforced mound so as to not to be snipered. “Jordan-Australia very good relationship.”
“It’s confronting,” Mr Dutton, accompanied by Australian defence attache Colonel Kath Stewart agreed.
“It’s hard for us as Australians to relate to civil war, our country has never borne a civil war, our country not taken up arms against each other and to look across the border and see the reality and see the war and the aftermath of it in camps today makes me realise how fortunate we are and how we have a special obligation to help people in need,” Mr Dutton said.
Follow @ZaatariCamp feed, home to +/- 80,000 #SyrianRefugees. Run by #UNHCR (@Refugees) | @UNHCRJo pic.twitter.com/eU3aMsoqUe
— UN Comms Watch (@UNCommsWatch) November 1, 2015He said Australians should be very proud they had embraced the planned refugee resettlement but said it was about getting the balance right as he defended his government’s turning away boat loads of refugees including many from the very province in Syria he was now overlooking. He said it was about restoring the integrity of the borders and national security and putting in place a program.
He added that ISIS was sadly to be around “for a long period of time” and seeing the frontline reinforced his view that Australia’s program of refugee settlement was the right one and sending those back that attempted to enter illegally.
“What this has reinforced to me today is we have made the right decision,” he said. “
We have made a generous offer to 12,000 people and today reinforced to me it is the right decision.”
Originally published as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton visits Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan
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