Inside the Minds of Rootless Children

I have chosen this time, in the leadup to world Refugee Day 20 June 2005, to remind us all that wars cause what is eupheistically called 'displacement'. It is like you were on your way home one day after a hard day's work and you found (a) it wasn't there (b) it was overrun by armed people who had just killed and raped your neighbours (c) it was surrounded by razor wire and you were shut out.

Of course, to some people this is all of little consequence. Take, for example, Australian Liberal MP, Sophie Panopoulos, who will go down in history for having called five of her Liberal colleagues "political terrorists" because they showed that they have a conscience and want to end the Howard government's pernicious Mandatory Detention policy, one of the worst examples of systematic violation of the human rights of asylum seekers to be seen in the world.

Here is a poem of hope, to address Sophie's identity crisis.
http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/margo_kingston_comment/001152.html
Letter to Sophie Panopoulos, Margo Kingston’s Webdiary, 16 June 2005

Inside the Minds of Rootless Children

The children who knew fear heard gunfire
Saw death felt hunger in their bellies
Envisaged vermilion skies
Poster green fields with happy yellow clouds
Iridescent chameleon standing out from its silver log
In azure and purple conspicuously catching the light
A smiling hippo with perfectly rounded sheen
Only beautiful creatures and tribal customs
With beads and spears and head dress

Willy Bach © 2003
Footnote: written following an exhibition at Alliance Francais, Kampala of art produced by Sudanese children who had been in an Internally Displaced Persons’ camp in Southern Sudan.