A woman has broken down on her knees before Prime Minister Scott Morrison, practically begging him to help save her family from violence in Cameroon.
The incident happened shortly after a press conference at beef festival in Rockhampton, and it’s a testament to the trauma that Australia’s refugee policy continues to inflict upon families, day in, day out.
“There’s a genocide going on there. I’ll have no family left if you don’t help me,” the woman told the Prime Minister.
A war known as the Anglophone Crisis has been raging in Cameroon for four years now, but the underlying tensions date back decades. Thousands of people have been killed, and many more hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
The conflict between the English and French-speaking parts of Cameroon is largely due to the brutal and careless way in which Europe drew boarders across Africa in the 1800s.
Morrison was quick to direct the distraught woman to the local Liberal MP, Michelle Landry, who was also present at the beef festival.
This woman approached the Prime Minister after a news conference and got down on her knees and begged him to help her family escape violence in Cameroon. pic.twitter.com/y4k01rxdDW
— SBS News (@SBSNews) May 4, 2021
“I’ve talked to Michelle, I’ve talked to her but they haven’t done everything,” the woman replied.
“Every day my people are being killed, I go through trauma everyday. Help me.”
Morrison then told the woman that Australia is accepting “many” refugees from “Africa” without actually mentioning any specific countries, such as Cameroon, where the woman’s from.
She went on to tell him that it’s too dangerous for her to go home and even visit her family, and that her brothers had been killed.
While migration to Australia has dropped dramatically after the borders were sealed at the beginning of the pandemic, the woman has been in Australia since 2009. The rest of her family remain overseas, she said.
A woman falls to her knees and prays to Prime Minister @ScottMorrisonMP, begging him to help her family in Africa following a press conference in Rockhampton. 7NEWS at 6pm. https://t.co/PNrJc2LX5T #auspol #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/QAJ1sUB2ul
— 7NEWS Central Queensland (@7NewsCQ) May 4, 2021
Afterwards, Michelle Landry confirmed that the woman had already approached her office for assistance in the past.
“I’ll certainly be following up with another meeting and we will contact the relevant people to see what can be done about this,” Landry told reporters.
The woman also told SBS News that she was “very happy” with Morrison’s response.
