Dorothy Scott of the Victoria Regional Meeting of Friends wrote the following on Palm /Refugee Sunday…
“On Palm Sunday, Christians ask for compassion for refugees. My thoughts on this day were with those who attempted to reach Australia by boat in 2013, and who are still stranded in PNG, some now too broken mentally and physically to be resettled in another country.
Many refugees subject to “offshore detention” have not seen their families since they fled persecution in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan. We have collectively ignored the suffering of these forgotten families.
I am profoundly grateful to countries such as New Zealand and Canada for accepting some of these refugees and their families. Through Operation Not Forgotten, initiated by the Refugee Council of Australia, 133 refugees have arrived in Canada and 22 are still waiting.
The daughter of one man still waiting to go to Canada has not seen her father since she was a child, almost 14 years ago. Now in great danger where she and the rest of the family are in hiding, she wrote these words about her father:
He weeps for his family,
Their faces now forgotten.
He weeps for the life he never lived,
And for the breaths already wasted.
And I weep for what my country has done. And I weep for what my country has become.”
Photo: Melbourne Friends at the Palm Sunday Gathering.