I hope we can develop this place into an ecological tourist spot that can attract young people to learn about the refugee crisis and how different actors worked together to resolve it.. Most are at the refugee camp here in Phanat Nikhom, near Bangkok, where about 430 live together in ramshackle bamboo and canvas huts, isolated from other Vietnamese who fear them as part of the Communist government they fled. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978 and now has about 125,000 troops fighting 50,000 or more guerrillas. Suddenly, in a flash of a moment I remembered reading about the kangarooin Australiain high school geography book. He then asked Do you know how to do logistic regression analysis? I was a bit shocked, because that is an elementary technique for any epidemiologist or biostatistician, but I politely replied yes. John did all the talking, while Philip, sitting opposite me , always smiled at me. UNHCR/Vivian Tan. On this Australia Day (26/1/2021) exactly 39 years ago I came to Australia as a refugee. Our self, our ego and our honors are all illusional, because they do not exist in isolation. I determined that each day I would learn 1 word, but in effect, I learned about 10 variations of the word. Victors job was to comfort new arrivals. This resettlement was very successful. We were not allowed to go out to mix with the local community who was keen to sell things to us. In 1945, Victor and his siblings reached an MCC refugee camp in Holland. After 3 days and 4 nights at treacherous sea, we randomly landed in Budi, a small fishing village in Southern Thailand. I was cleaning things in the lab, but secretly looked over his shoulder and realized that he was working out the standard deviation! The large camp could house more than 10,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I very much wanted to see the animal with my own eyes. Often, I took the CRFs and the computer to home (not allowed these days) to work over weekends. . I was also the first Vietnamese Australian who was awarded the prestigious National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow and Leadership Fellow (aka Australia Fellow) that have supported my work over the years. I obtained 2 doctorates in medicine and science from UNSW Sydney. Top Right:Victor with a boat arriving to the Songkhla camp, circa1985. litres of water per day for hygiene and basic cooking. An engineer and I were assigned to take care of the engines and petrol. We are Vietnamese, and we have a long long tradition of respecting academia. Then in the afternoon, we boarded a huge Qantas aircraft (I think it was a Boeing 747) heading for Sydney. One of my main roles was overseeing MCCs work in the Phanat Nikhom Refugee Camp. He never owned a cell phone, or a computer, or a TV, but he gave much of himself to helpthose in need. Oh my God, why they are so kind to us, I asked myself. 2020by Mennonite Central Committee and Caleb Schrock-Hurst. Center Right: Victor with two Karen orphans, circa 1990. I can never forget the first day on the job when I was asked to peel onions in a huge bag.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Sakaeo Governor Phakharathon Thianchai mused that he was just a 17-year-old student when the camp opened. At Garvan, I worked very hard, day and night. I did not have a clue of what was happening. Resources for asylum-seekers in the United States, Our fight against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, Environment, Disasters and Climate Change. When I first met Victor he was in southern Thailand, working on the beaches outside of Songkhla City. Without the prestige of Australia I could not have reached the heights of medical research internationally. I consider that my contribution is a way to say thankyou to the country that has saved me, the country that I now dearly call home. I was tongue-tied. I noticed that his right hand was searching a wooden stamp, and then stamped on my application. calebschrockhurst@mcc.org. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked with many brilliant minds who directly or indirectly shaped my career in my early days at Garvan. But the 20,000 Mennonites that came to Canada from eastern Europe in the 1920s had strong memories of their journey, and thousands more came to Canada as Umsiedler after World War Two. Here, he said, is the boat that came in yesterday. Two-thirds of the 76 deserters resettled last year were taken by Scandinavian nations, which traditionally accept difficult cases. My first priority is education like so many Vietnamese refugees in US and around the world. In the ensuing months, I got a job as a kitchen hand at St Vincents Hospital in Darlinghurst. Those on board prayed for good weather and hoped pirates would not harm them as they neared Thailand. I was absolutely honest: just want to see a kangaroo. Many more of the 35,000 Mennonites never made it to safety. I thought he had rejected my application. The principal investigators of the Study was Professor John Eisman, the late Professor Philip Sambrook, and Dr Paul Kelly. He looked at me and said something like This is a complicated thing, young man! Another deserter, Le Truong Truc, 29, became addicted to heroin. We stayed in Budi for approximately one month. The library regularly received a lot of books, magazines and newspapers donated by Vietnamese groups in the United States and France. On 26/1 people are talking about invasion day, but I am talking about a personal Thanksgiving day.My story started with a hilarious interview in Songkhla Refugee Camp (Thailand) 40 years ago . "I hope we can develop this place into an ecological tourist spot that can attract young people to learn about the refugee crisis.". The final third, almost all of whom eventually left Laos, were strong supporters of the U.S.s military effort. Songkhla Camp was the receiving center where thousands of Boat People were kept after their landing on the various beaches. We invented the worlds first model for fracture risk assessment. My hard work did pay off: the UNSW Sydney and Garvan Institute awarded meThe Best Doctoral Thesis Prize. He found a small apartment and settled in. An estimated 500 to 600 Vietnamese army deserters languish in Thai refugee camps, largely forgotten and unwanted. What motivated him to give so many years of his life to refugee resettlement? Lowland Lao spoke Lao and were primarily economic migrants they had only to cross the Mekong and go to any one of many Lao refugee camps to apply for resettlement. It carried 23 people. From 1981 to 1987 I served as MCCs Country Representative in Thailand. I knew about the refugees, and sometimes even heard gunfire across the border, he recalled. Thailand has hosted more than 1 million refugees from the region since the mid-1970s. For me, all I had was a little bag (provided by UNHCR) with two shorts and two trousers. He was then jailed in Aranyaprathet in Thailand for 10 months before reaching Phanat Nikhom. Chuong said Vietnamese who flee to Thailand as boat people and get more favored treatment as refugees are rich people who can afford to pay for boat passage. In the early morning of 25/1/1982 we were transported to the Bangkok Airport. In a camp where most refugees are preparing for new lives in the West, many deserters have remained for years, deep in depression. However, we were assured that we would stay here for only 2 days to do more paperwork with the Australian Embassy. He then said Smart people like you should go back to university to get a degree. So, I was back to St Vincents where I got the first job years ago. MCC set up an orientation and advocacy program where all refugees from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia would participate. Some friends were former army officers of the Republic of Vietnam, and they just finished their years in reeducation camps. . Two years ago, I was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences for my distinguished contributions to Australian medical research. Their tasks were to give basic orientation to all refugees about life in Canada. I am the only one who is still working in academia. I did join the team, and it was a decision that changed my life. While in the camp, I got a nice job as a librarian in the camps library, which was run by a Assembly of God volunteer group. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), The Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study, How did I come to Australia? I have wandered through 3 major universities in Sydney: Macquarie, Sydney, and New South Wales (UNSW Sydney). Key people over the years were Fred and Shirley Reddekopp and Henry and Tena Neufeld. None of us was a seafarer. Well, with this level of English, I am afraid that you cannot study in Australia. I sometimes visited him in camps along the Mooi River. Created with Wix.com. The interview was conducted through an interpreter, because my English was not good enough for such a serious conversation. He ran the post office that linked refugees with their homeland. There were two groups of Vietnamese at the camp: boat people, who had landed in the Malay Peninsula section of Thailand and who had previously been held in a camp near Songkhla, and a second, smaller group who were not eligible for resettlement: military officers and soldiers of the now-defunction Si Gn Government. The Study base is in Dubbo but is coordinated out of theGarvan Institute of Medical Research, an affiliation of St Vincents Hospital. He later moved to the United States, and was awarded the 2015 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship by President Barack Obama. At that moment, I felt like being reborn. In 2008, I became the first Vietnamese Australian who was appointed the position of full professor of the Faculty of Medicine of UNSW. One day, I noticed that a senior pathologist (I think he was Dr Ackerman) was struggling with a calculation for his research paper. When the camp was closed after refugee flows decreased, Victor could have gone back to British Columbia, but instead he volunteered to cross Thailand, to work along the Thai-Burmese border. Two didnt make it because they were swept overboard. Some 106,000 Myanmar refugees are currently living in nine camps along the Thailand-Myanmar border. The deserters, usually single males with few skills or ties abroad, are among the most difficult refugees in Thailand to resettle. In Vietnam farming is considered the lowest form of occupation, because it does not require any particular expertise or a lot of money. Victor would not see his mother for 25 years she was sent to Siberia and was one of few to survive.
The new centre is supported by Thailands Forestry Department, which manages the current site, as well as ICRC and UNHCR. People dont think of us as people who escaped the army of the Communists, complained Hoang Manh Chuong, a 27-year-old deserter who has been here since 1984 and was rejected by the United States in January. We also accompanied refugees on the bus ride to the airport on departure days. I have never in my life seen so many onions. Twenty years later the Institute had grown into a world-class medical research center with 6 divisions and 600 staff. Victor, his mother, and his three siblings joined the group. At Songkhla, each refugee would apply to resettle in a third country, usually a western country. Without Australia, I could not have done what I have in the past 30 years. Based on a friends advice that Australia is a peaceful and beautiful country, I decided to choose Australia as my future home country. Today a calm pond and surrounding forest cover an area where thatched huts used to sprawl across more than 2.3 square kilometres in the shadow of I Dang Mountain. Most Cambodians, though, were not eligible for resettlement. About 1 year later, I then got a job as an assistant in the pathology lab of the Royal North Shore hospital. John and I and the team (which included the late Dr Philip Sambrook, Dr Paul Kelly, and Dr Nigel Morrison) have gone through some good times and bad times, and we have made many substantive and important contributions to the osteoporosis field globally. We were then transported toCabramatta Hostelwhere we would stay for the next 3 months. The descendants of that group also had no memory of resettlement. I see. In Bangkok, we were temporarily put in a prison for foreigners! I did not know what to say, because he was quite right: my English was not good enough for high school, let alone university study. In 1990 (or 1991) I was recruited by Professor John Eisman to work on an important research project called Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study which was just commenced in mid1989. He only looked at the compass and the star, and with some guesswork from others, to determine the direction to Thailand. After all, I must thank the kangaroo in the geography textbook that unwittingly helped me to get through the interview with a marvellous outcome. Thailand's Khao I Dang camp offers lessons in life-saving coordination during the Cambodian exodus and responsibility-sharing to help rebuild refugees' lives. The Americans supported the resistance to the Vietnamese military effort, which included the Khmer Rouge, Sihanoukists (monarchists), and the Sonn San group. Five days passed before his body was found. I met Victor again a few months ago. 
In addition to an indoor exhibit, there are also signs around the compound marking the former site of ICRCs surgical hospital, and a partially completed replica of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, that was left behind when artist Yary Livan returned to Cambodia in 1992. My duties were to collect tissues and blood samples from various departments and wards, and then organized them in proper places. He even offered me a better salary package than what I got from Sydney University at the time. Victor Neumann: The Man who cared for Refugees. It is a typical house in the Mekong Delta where most people are farmers. Refugees who would not be leaving the camp soon were trained to assist in the program some of these folks remained in the camp for up to four years. Everyone was happy for me, and we went for a coffee to celebrate the occasion. Twenty five years later, I became part of the Institutes history, and a investigator of the Dubbo study. A village official found a large, open garage where we could temporarily stay while he would inform higher authorities of our arrival.