HomeNewsBeritaBusinessLifestyleOpinionWorldSportsPropertyEducationCarzillaGalleryVideosAccelerator

Refugee activists soldier on through tragedy, frustration

-

They use their sorrowful encounters to cope and inspire them.

0
Shares
Total Views: 1
Free Malaysia Today
Elise Arya Chen (in red) with refugee leaders and representatives at a training session on media advocacy.

PETALING JAYA:
Elise Arya Chen has encountered many tragic stories in her four years of working with refugees, but the case that still haunts her involves a boy from Myanmar who died a few days shy of his first birthday.

The boy could have been saved if it were not for what Chen calls “systemic challenges”.

First, she had to hustle for funds for the surgery as the boy required an organ transplant.

Then, she had to look for doctors willing to operate on an infant, the risk of which Chen believes made them apprehensive.

And when she finally found one in a neighbouring country, there was the possibility the boy would not be able to set foot in Malaysia again.

So Chen approached the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with hopes she could get the family resettled and when that did not work out, she started banging on doors of various embassies.

Finally, one embassy agreed but the boy died, just days before the scheduled re-settlement.

It left Chen so much more frustrated. “For a while, I felt I wanted to give up. Of all the cases, I wanted this one to succeed,” said Chen, who attended the boy’s funeral in 2019.

Yet these setbacks, as gut-wrenching as they are, are part of a cycle – both upsetting and empowering – that Chen finds herself in.

On the one hand, she is left disappointed and angry, and on the other, she pushes herself to continue trying to fix the system, with her ultimate goal to land a role where she can affect policy change.

And although Chen is still in search of a proper coping mechanism to deal with the second-hand trauma she encounters, her line of work has allowed her to see both sides of the issue revolving around refugees.

Free Malaysia Today
Elise Arya Chen sending food aid to Pudu, which has a significant population of Burmese ethnic refugees, after it was placed under a semi-enhanced MCO in May.

While she does not condone tribalism, she understands where it comes from and how it has been nurtured by politics against “outsiders” who are often made scapegoats.

Which is why Chen wants Malaysians to take a more humanitarian approach. She calls on people to offer a helping hand, instead of criticising.

The public must understand that type of trauma refugees endure – from violence to sexual assault.

“The one thing we need to do is to show a little compassion. We need to be more empathetic,” she said.

Fajar Santoadi, in some ways, is an “outsider” looking in.

An Indonesian who migrated to Malaysia in 2009, the 45-year-old was roped into this line of work by “accident” after a church friend was detained under the 6P amnesty programme.

He was then referred to Tenaganita and in 2013, he joined the NGO, where he has since become a counsellor.

Fajar, who describes himself as a “migrant by choice”, says the case that hit him hardest involved a group of Rohingya construction workers in Johor in 2016 who had approached him after they were not paid their wages.

All the time spent to help them proved to be an exercise in futility. “It was disheartening as I couldn’t help them claim their wages.”

He also finds it emotionally exhausting when he is approached by unpaid refugees as there is no legal recourse for the community, as refugees are unable to officially work in Malaysia.

“We just try to negotiate with the party involved, and plead with them to be kind. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he says, adding that at times it requires detective-like work to find evidence to show that a refugee had been “employed” when they were denied pay.

But cases like these, where refugees go unpaid – which Fajar admits he deals with quite often – do leave him feeling helpless and frustrated.

He turns to poetry and writing to cope with such feelings. A long time ago, it was art.

Like Chen, the sad stories he comes across, can be a source of inspiration.

“The longer I am in this line, it helps me work out the frustrations,” he said.

Fajar has a golden rule. He leaves his work at the door of his home.

He does not talk about his day’s work with his wife, a Malaysian he married before migrating to Malaysia. “Even if I’m passionate, I have learnt to keep a distance. It’s my way of self preservation.”

Stay current - Follow FMT on WhatsApp, Google news and Telegram

Subscribe to our newsletter and get news delivered to your mailbox.