Thursday 16 December 2010

Refugees

Yesterday there was a disaster when a number of people died including some children when they were trying to come to Australia. They came on a small boat that was not suitable to carry a big number of people.


Most of the people on the boat were Iraqis. They were trying to flee their country because it is not safe to live there any more. It is not safe to walk in the streets and the future for those people looks very bad. In fact, there is no future at all. 


A few years ago, America, Britain and Australia invaded Iraq after telling the whole world a lot of lies about weapons of mass destruction that were there. They bombed most of the Iraqi cities and nearly one million people died there. America, Britain and Australia didn't find any weapons of mass destruction but they found a lot of petrol. 


 Iraq is a very rich country that has a lot of oil but the people there are very poor. The government in Iraq controls the country with the help of the American troops there. Nearly all the Iraqi petrol goes to America and Britain. The government does not build good schools or hospitals for the people to use. 


Nowadays, two million Iraqis live as refugees in a third-world country called Syria. Australia, America and Britain have refused to take any of them. They refuse to provide Syria with any help because they don't like the government there. 


The Australian government doesn't want to take any refugees and always puts them in detention centres (prisons) for many years. In these detention centres there are many children who spend their childhood there and then get sent back to where they came from. 


Some Australians feel sorry for those refugees and hope that the government will change its policy and allow them to come and live here. They wish they will be treated as human beings because those refugees haven't committed any crimes. They are running away from death. 


In the picture you can see how high the waves are and how small the boat is. This boat is not good enough to carry all those people. Some of the dead were infants and young children. They were helpless. Their families were hoping to bring them to Australia to have a better future. Now these families have lost their children and they will all end up living in a detention centre for some years.