Four Corners: June 27

Next Monday on Four Corners, ‘Where Are They Now?’ – the story of the families who fled the killing fields of Cambodia to find safety in Australia, revisited nearly 25 years on. What are they doing? Did they find a home? And what does their experience tell us about the current debate over refugee arrivals?

In 1987, with debate raging over refugee policy in Australia, Four Corners met four families who came to this country in search of refuge and a future. The stories they told about life under Pol Pot were difficult to hear.

Now, reporter Marian Wilkinson returns to those same families and asks them about their struggle to remake their lives in a new country. They tell her the good and the bad – the moments of triumph and despair, and what it means for them to be an Australian.

For many Cambodian refugees, their story began on 17th April 1975 when Pol Pot’s murderous Khmer Rouge took over the capital of their country, Phnom Penh. What followed was horror on a shocking scale. People were driven into the countryside where hundreds of thousands were killed. Others were forced into labour gangs and worked to death. In all, 1.7 million people lost their lives. In the years between Pol Pot’s arrival and the tumult of the Vietnamese invasion of the country, many Cambodians fled seeking refuge.

In Australia a major debate began about the community’s responsibility to these people. In that highly charged atmosphere, reporter Marian Wilkinson sought out four families who made it to Australia to hear what they had been through and why they wanted to live here. There is little doubt that anyone watching would have felt sympathy for 11-year-old Keang, who was forced to stand with many other children whilst the Khmer Rouge soldiers brutally executed one of her friends for stealing food to feed another child. Others told how they listened to the screams as death squads clubbed their friends and families to death without any explanation.

The program left little doubt these people needed the Australian community’s help. What it couldn’t answer was a much bigger question: could the refugees find a place in a society so different from their own? Now with the debate over refugees once again taking centre stage, Four Corners revisits the families to find out how their lives have turned out.

We hear how they have struggled to come to terms with a new country that was not always welcoming. Some tell how they married, had children; how they began businesses that succeeded and in one case went bust, forcing them to sell their home. The families also talk about the stresses that developed between the generations that came to Australia and the children who were born here. Despite this, the program shows that the next generation seems to have adjusted well to a new society. Many have found success here, and their parents make it clear how grateful they are to have found a home in Australia.

Stepping back from the deeply personal insights each person gives, for anyone forming a successful immigration and refugee policy, there are clear lessons. Giving refuge is one thing, but helping people find a new homeland requires care, understanding and resources.

‘Where Are They Now?’ airs Monday 27th June at 8.30pm on ABC1.