By Michael Newhouse
AN initiative to improve cultural understanding between police officers and the Sudanese community would be welcomed in Brimbank, according to police, refugee support groups and the Sudanese community itself, all struggling to deal with the challenges posed by the increase in the number of refugees from Sudan.
Victoria Police are to send two police officers from Dandenong, in Melbourne’s South East, which has one of Australia’s largest Sudanese populations, to Sudan for what has been described as a three-week humanitarian tour of the region.
The officers are expected to return with a knowledge and understanding of the war-torn African country and its culture, which is still a largely male-dominated and tribal society, and where many residents hold a strong distrust of police.
In the past few years, St Albans and Sunshine have received an influx of refugee migrants from Sudan.
In the two years between 1 January 2004 and 1 January last year 496 men from Sudan settled in Brimbank, according to figures from the Migrant Resource Centre.
Keilor Downs Sergeant Colin Gilmour told Star last week: “The problems are going to be the same for Dandenong as they are here.”
He said communicating with the newly arrived Sudanese migrants was a big issue, and police also found it difficult dealing with younger members of the community who may be wary of authority.
“They’ve come over here, with the way things are in their country, they come over distrusting the police and they don’t trust us over here,” Sgt Gilmour said.
“Anything that can make our understanding of them, their understanding of us, and try and break down the barriers… and anything that can make our jobs easier and their lives easier, I can’t see how it could be a bad thing,” he said, referring to the trip.
Victoria Police is keen to emphasise that it is not a growth in crime among the Sudanese that is behind the trip.
Senior Sergeant Tom Woodstock, from the police’s Multicultural Advisory Unit said last week: “We’re not looking at this as a problem, but a fact-finding experience.”
Sgt Gilmour estimated that the Sudanese population represented less than one per cent of crimes processed at the Keilor Downs station.
Sudanese refugee Deng Tor Yong Deng, who now works as a settlement support worker at St Albans Migrant Resource Centre, told Star that new members of the Sudanese community around Brimbank were not used to the policing situation in Australia.
He said people born in Sudan were cautious of police in Australia because of what they had experienced in their home country.
“The police here is a community service, they deal with people like any person. In Africa, if someone ever comes to you wearing a uniform, you think that you’ve done something wrong,” said Mr Deng.
“People will have confidence that police are human beings just like us, that they are not people that will just take you and torture you.”
The manager of Adult Multicultural Education Services in St Albans, Jenny Leahy, said it was an excellent idea to send people to gather information about where these people have come, and what they’re going through in Australia.
“The general public, and police included, they don’t have a lot of empathy, they just don’t stop to think what these people have been through and where they’ve come from,” Ms Leahy said.
