Refugees the world forgot: West Papuans overcoming disadvantage

(Photos in article)

Refugees the world forgot: West Papuans overcoming disadvantage

By Sarah Jacob | 17 May 2020, 12:30pm

Children of West Papua, involved in the Rainbow Project, proudly exhibiting their favourite books (image supplied).

Dedicated teachers are volunteering to educate and help West Papuan refugee children escaping violence, writes Sarah Jacob.

IT'S 8 AM on a Saturday morning in early March. A group of young children are busy arranging tables and chairs inside a makeshift building. They range in age from toddlers to late primary schoolers. Their classroom doubles as their community’s only church. The building is a simple structure, constructed largely from pieces of corrugated iron and bamboo poles.

Once they have set up the classroom, they wait for their teachers – Mary Fairio and her friends – to arrive.

This is the Rainbow Project, a Saturday school run by volunteers for the children of Rainbow Camp, a refugee settlement in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. When most people think of refugees in the context of Papua New Guinea, they think of asylum seekers held here by the Australian Government as part of its offshore detention regime.

But the inhabitants of this camp are West Papuan families who fled across the border from the western half of the island of New Guinea, most of them more than a decade ago. They migrated to escape violence and persecution by militias and the Indonesian military, which has been ongoing since Indonesia annexed the region in 1962. ………………..  https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/refugees-the-world-forgot-west-papuans-overcoming-disadvantage,13904