Joey and the refugees

By Elizabeth Hart
LEADING Senior Constable Joseph Herrech thought he understood refugees well enough.
He had been a multicultural police officer for about a year when, during a routine presentation at a language school, his emotions were tested yet again in his relationships with trauma-ridden people.
“One African lady was so frightened, she cried. We sat down and talked.
“She told me then her husband had been in the military. When war broke out, rebel forces sought experienced men.
“They forced him to join the rebellion in another village or they would slaughter others in his own village. He refused, and within a few weeks he was dead.”
Joey’s work is an everlasting quest to win the trust of people who arrived in Australia on humanitarian programs.
“They don’t walk around holding a signpost about their past,” he said. Six years after joining the Victoria Police Multicultural Unit, Joey has no doubts about his chosen career.
He knew what it was like to be a boy trying to fit in but not knowing where.
His Greek and Egyptian heritage made him mildly different at Berwick Secondary College in the 1980s.
Joey’s grandparents had arrived in Australia in the 1950s – five brothers with poor English all spelt their names differently, so the family name ended up as Herrech, a slight variation on the original, thanks to the government officials misrecording the names.
Eventually Joey’s dad settled in Narre Warren and Joey, proficient in Arabic and Greek, called Melbourne’s outer south east home.
This was precisely the background that stood him in good stead when he was thrown into the deep end in multicultural policing.
The unit is fairly elite. Joey is one of only 15 multicultural liaison officers across the state and one of two in Region 5, which covers Dandenong, Casey, and Cardinia.
With his offsider James Waterson, the pair tries to make the lives of new settlers a little easier.
Torture and trauma could barely be understood from a distance, so it was that Joey went to Sudan in April to work in the refugee camps.
His job was to prepare Africa’s dispossessed thousands for the nation they were headed for, a nation where police are meant to be friends rather than foes.
The same mission has also taken him to the Thai Burma border and to Cairo and Kenya, to work with the refugees.
“It is a stifling 45 degrees Celsius outside,” he recorded for the Berwick Secondary College newsletter.
“I am one of 50 people crammed into a tin shed the size of a double garage.
“They have just been given life-saving antibiotics to combat typhoid fever but the temperature is so high it destroys the effect.
“There is no electricity, no clean water. Welcome to the deathly world of the refugee camp in Kenya.”
Living for seven days with some of the 40,000 Sudanese in the Kenyan camps was like taking a walk in their shoes. For Joey it was important training.
“Since arriving back from Africa, I have not complained about life in Victoria.
“The refugee camp was patrolled by paramilitary guards, for whom upholding the law meant shooting transgressors.
“That sort of experience makes it very hard for refugees to relate to authority figures such as the Victoria Police.”
Thus Joey’s role, and that of his colleague James Waterson, is to promote harmony, to identify at-risk people, to organise soccer and basketball matches, to liaise with the Department of Immigration, and to speak to newcomers in a way that shows police garb is a sign of safety not suffering.
All of this is occurring in the most multicultural local government area in Australia – Dandenong.
“One minute I’m with Russian seniors, the next with Sudanese youth.”
Following the exodus of refugees from Africa, many are choosing to return to their own countries as peace prevails, Joey has noticed. Those from the Upper Nile, Southern Sudan, are an example.
Meanwhile, the ones who settle in police region 5 have a friend in Joey and his mates in the Multicultural Unit.