A Minnesotan nurse saved my refugee family’s life. Four decades on, we watched the news together in horror |
Four decades ago, my parents were Cambodian refugees. As high school students, they were thrown into one of the darkest chapters of humanity’s history, surviving nearly five years in forced labour camps under the Khmer Rouge genocide. An estimated 2.7 million of my kin perished during that time. Fortunately for my family, they were accepted under Australia’s humanitarian program and arrived in Australia on 26 January, a date heavy with complexity for Australian identity, and our refugee story became another layer within it.
Our journey began when my mother discovered she was pregnant. Together with my father, they decided to flee on foot through landmine-ridden jungle toward the Thai-Cambodian border, carrying nothing but their lives and the hope that their unborn child might escape the suffering they had endured.
It was there I was born. In a refugee camp shaped by loss, fear and uncertainty.
What met my parents next was not perfected policy or market-based solutions.
It was civil society.
Volunteers from around the world stepped into the chaos where states, borders and institutions had failed. Among them were nurses from the US who gave their time, skill and care in conditions few would willingly choose. One nurse, in particular, took my parents under her wing. She helped them navigate medical checks, paperwork, survival and dignity. She cared for them, and for me, as if we were her own family.
She was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Four decades later, another Minnesotan nurse would lose his life supporting migrants in distress. Alex Pretti was shot by ICE agents and made the........