Looking at the happy and smiling faces of the family it is scarcely believable they have all spent most of their lives living in fear.
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Tuesday marked ‘World Refugee Day’ and as part of Refugee Week The Area News sat down with a Griffith family, forced to leave their home in Pakistan due to persecution and violence.
The family, who cannot be named for safety reasons, are part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, a movement regarded by other Muslims as ‘heretical’ to the point where in 1974 Pakistan’s then Prime Minister declared them ‘non-Muslims’ in the constitution.
With this came jail time for the Ahmadi for simple things like greeting people or praying in Islamic mosques, as well as a danger far more sinister.
“In 2010 in Lahore two terrorists bombed us in our mosque during the prayer and more than 100 Ahmadis were killed – and after that the target killings were getting bigger and bigger day by day,” daughter Baari* said.
“I don’t know how we lived like that, our community motto is love for all, hatred for none.”
Faced with a future where her brilliant daughters and son could not be educated and where it was uncertain they would even survive the mother of the family took action and boarding a flight to Australia sought refugee for them all.
“100 people gone, in just one day, I had to do something,” she said.
It was a process that would take three years to accomplish.
Three years of a mother separated from her children and husband, living in constant fear they would be harmed before she could bring them to safety. “It was so, so hard, every day I’m depression. . .but my girls, my son are safe, my husband is safe,” she said.
“That moment when we landed in Melbourne and we were all together again, we cried a lot the same time we were laughing and crying,” daughter Aima* said.
“Our mother she is one person in a million.”
Today the family lives together in their Griffith home, the four youngest children attend school while the two eldest are at TAFE preparing for university with big dreams of one day being nurses and chemistry professors.
None of it is ever taken for granted.
I love living in Griffith it is so beautiful, friendly people and relaxing without any type of fear or tension,” Baari* said.
“Our thinking is we should live in an area where things will be built, we want to be a part of success.”
*Names in this story have been changed for safety reasons.
