Child Soldier Turned Refugee Lawyer Deng Adut Is NSW Australian Of The Year

If you’ve gone today without at all being reminded that your life is actually ridiculously easy and comfortable compared to what some people have gone through, guess what: you’re actually a piece of shit.
Just kidding (obviously, you’re great and we both know it), but it can be pretty fucking galling to read about the shit some people have gone through and then see where they’ve ended up, when by comparison I was given like every opportunity in the world and I’m sure not achieving anything.
By the age of six, Deng Adut had been kidnapped from his family’s farm in Sudan and forced to fight as a child soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, until he was shock in the back at the age of twelve, following which he was smuggled out of Sudan and came to Australia, to eventually become a defence attorney.
You can watch a much more affecting version of his story right here courtesy of Western Sydney University:
Tonight he was named NSW‘s Australian of the Year for 2017, and could now potentially be named Australia’s Australian of the Year (the nomenclature here is very confusing) in just in January time for Australia Day next year.

The announcement was made by NSW premier Mike Baird, who said that Adut “represents the very best of what makes our country great, and has channelled his success into helping hundreds of people in the state’s Sudanese community navigate their way through the Australian legal system“.
Adut arrived in Sydney in 1998 and taught himself to read while working at a petrol station in Blacktown (eventually graduating from Western Sydney University with a law degree), and co-founded AC Law Group, which provides pro bono legal services to disadvantaged youth.
Clearly forgetting he’s in the Liberal Party, earlier this year Baird expressed concern about what would happen to Australia if we cracked down on accepting refugees:
“My genuine and honest fear is what will happen to Australia if we shut our doors to people such as Deng, whether it be out of fear or ignorance.

“We have a choice to continue on the path that brought this nation to where and who we are today, or we can let fear blind us and hate infect us.”
You’re not wrong mate, maybe tell the rest of your party that.
Source: SMH.
Photo: AC Law Group.

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