Dr Michael FURTADO

I know that I could be a refugee, since my mother & her family were refugees from the Japanese invasion of Burma during the Second World War. My father’s family took her in & she later married him, so I have ‘inherited’ that impulse from ‘both sides’, as it were. Thereafter, and as a resident of Calcutta for many years, she became an ardent champion of the refugee cause, as refugees – Hindu & Muslim – poured in from Bangladesh during the Pakistani Civil War. My Jesuit college, St Xavier’s, which boasts extensive grounds in the Calcutta CBD, opened them up as an emergency centre with a dispensary serviced by several Old Boys & their families with students donating time to collect clothing, cook, serve meals & clean toilets. This task was co-ordinated by two Belgian priests. Fr Antoine & Fr Beckers, who spoke fluent Bengali & who played a major role in rehousing & finding employment for the thousand or so refugees encamped in the college grounds. As I grew up I specialised in Human Rights law, became a Human Rights educator in Australia & now, in retirement, spend all my time advocating for asylum-seekers globally & locally. THANKS!