The road from Damascus
Less than one per cent of refugees ever get to settle in a peaceful country: on average, most will spend 17 years in a refugee camp. Only the lucky ones make it to the relative calm of a place like New Zealand. Matt Stewart follows one Syrian family’s jo
NAZEH DIAB knew his family had to leave Damascus when a government-backed militia found out he had harboured wounded protesters from the civil uprisings of 2011 in his home.
‘‘My wife’s brother rang me and said you’ve got to go today, not tomorrow,’’ Diab said.
He tells his story while making traditional Syrian cardamom coffee at the Housing New Zealand flat he shares with wife Mirvat Hassan and their son Ahmadomar, 10, and daughters Maria, 8, and Ginan, 6, in the Wellington suburb of Strathmore.
Their new life scraping by on a benefit is a far cry from the prosperous middle-class one they were forced to leave behind in the satellite city of Sayyidah Zaynab in the Syrian capital’s southern reaches.
Diab, himself the son of Palestinian refugees, was a political columnist and interior decorator, while Mirvat was a teacher – a profession that came in handy when the family moved to Bangkok in late 2012. They spent two years in the Thai city in limbo as they waited for refugee status to be granted, while Hassan worked as the main breadwinner teaching Arabic.
The tipping point for fleeing Syria came after a massacre 50 metres from the family home, in which up to 400 people were killed. Diab, 49, said he felt cowardly for staying inside as children and teenagers lay dying and dismembered outside.
‘‘All people my age were cowards, but teenagers are not afraid. They don’t know the meaning of fear.’’
The bloodshed was sparked by protests against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad during which a teenage anti-government protester was killed. The massacre happened during his funeral, when two rockets were fired into the crowd. Diab claims the mass killing was covered up by the regime.
‘‘There were pieces of the bodies in every street.’’
In the aftermath, he answered a knock at his door to find up to 20 badly injured people begging for help. He let them in.
‘‘One of them was screaming please help me . . . I ran away to the corner and I started crying. It was a terrible crime that day.’’
Two months later, one of the injured men inadvertently gave Diab’s name to a militia fighter, who was holding the man at knifepoint. Fearing further reprisals, he went to Lebanon to get a visa and eventually ended up fleeing with his family to Thailand. He found out later his abandoned family home had been destroyed in a rocket attack sometime in 2012.
ONCE refugees have fled their homelands, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees refers them to national governments. New Zealand decides its quota composition with a focus on helping ‘‘women at risk’’ – defined by the United Nations Association of New Zealand as ‘‘girls or women who have protection problems particular to their gender, whether they are single-head families, unaccompanied girls, or together with their male family members’’.
Immigration officers then travel on selection missions to interview refugees. The process includes risk assessments, health, security and biometric checks cross-referenced through the Five Country Conference, a consortium of immigration agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the United States.
Once accepted, travel is arranged and airfares paid by the Immigration Service, which decides where a refugee or family will be placed, based on factors such as the level of ethnic support or available housing in a given area.
Syrian former refugees in Wellington tend to be settled in the city’s southern suburbs, which has significant Syrian populations around Miramar and Newtown.
New Zealand has promised to take in an extra 600 Syrian refugees over the next three years, and Immigration Service refugee division national manager Andrew Lockhart says selection missions to Lebanon are planned for October and December.
The 250 selected for resettlement this financial year are likely to arrive in three groups in January, March and May next year. About 100 will come to the capital.
Refugees are given permanent residence on arrival but spend their first six weeks at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre where they complete a reception programme to integrate in to living and working here. As well as basic English lessons, they undergo medical and mental health assessments.
A raft of government agencies and charities are involved in the settlement of refugees, including the Health, Education and Social Development ministries, as well as Work and Income and police.
NZ Red Cross is contracted to set up services to support refugees after they leave the centre, including bank accounts, IRD numbers, Work and Income benefits if required, housing and furniture. Each refugee or family is also assigned a social worker and volunteer support workers to help them in their first year here.
Dave Oliver, a retired printer from Petone, is one of those volunteers.
Dave Oliver, volunteer Over the past four years he has helped resettle families who fled conflicts in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Colombia and Burma.
‘‘The big challenge for many families is speaking English. So we guide them through bureaucracy, like IRD and Work and Income and help with shopping – all the day-to-day stuff we take for granted,’’ Oliver says.
Cultural differences can be stark, and New Zealand can seem like another world to someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp.
‘‘So we don’t try and push our culture. It’s about integration, not assimilation.
‘‘The reward is watching the family move in and around our society, their English is improving, the children are in school, they’re confident and looking for work.’’
Wellington City Council community services manager Jenny Rains says the council, alongside Housing New Zealand, is responsible for providing social housing to refugees and liaises with frontline charities such as Red Cross and Refugee Trauma Recovery alongside English language and interpretation services.
Both the Catholic and Anglican churches have pledged to help up to 300 refugee families, and Rains says church representatives will be part of the conversation when deputy mayor Justin Lester leads a forum on the next wave of Syrian refugees to arrive in the capital.
The council has a community action team to make sure refugees’ Syrian refugee Nazeh Diab fled his war-torn homeland with his family and is starting a new life in Wellington. needs as tenants are met as they are some of the most vulnerable social housing tenants.
‘‘Ultimately, we want to make Wellington as welcoming as possible,’’ Rains says.
Diab and his wife are learning English full time and hope to get back in to the workforce once their language skills are up to scratch.
Although it has not been perfect, Diab says the resettlement process has been valuable. The six weeks spent in Mangare was vital especially in integrating those who had never lived in a peaceful society.