A force for change borne out of detention

Rehana Rafique is one of about 3000 Rohingya that now call Australia home after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. On any given day she can be found at the Rohingya Bazaar café - a place of support, familiar faces and food - for the 500-strong community living in Melbourne.

Rehana Rafique and her family arrived in Australia by boat in 2012. Illustration: Tia Kass Source: Tia Kass

This is one of several interviews from the SBS special feature 'Faces of the Rohingya'. Watch Dateline's investigation 'Myanmar's Killing Fields' at the end of the article.

Rehana Rafique was born in Malaysia, where her parents had fled years earlier. She has never been to Myanmar, but her parents always say it’s beautiful.

“My dad told me he had a big house there. They were rich - like, normal rich,” she says.

In Malaysia, ten people lived in their small rented house, and Rehana remembers always doing chores: helping her aunts with cleaning and her dad with selling fruit.

Illustration: Tia Kass Source: Tia Kass

Malaysia hasn’t signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, so the family lived at risk of arrest or deportation.

Rehana and her family arrived in Australia by boat in 2012, just before the Labor government re-opened the offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru.

Many people who came after them remain offshore, but they were held in Darwin for only one month.

Now 19, Rehana was 13-years-old and she loved detention - you could play with other kids all the time and there was no housework. When an immigration officer asked what career she wanted, she replied: “I want to become like you”.

She intends to stick to her word. She finished high school last year and is studying a diploma of justice at TAFE.

Rehana had never been to school before she arrived in Australia.

“My first year, I just stayed quiet,” she says. “Now my friends say ‘Shut up Rehana - you talk too much!’”

Every Friday for two years she has volunteered at Springvale Neighbourhood House, using her six languages - besides English - to support and interpret for other women in the suburb.

READ MORE: Faces of the Rohingya

Often, the women are dealing with family violence. She is also helping Victoria Police develop a mobile app for the Rohingya community, with audio recordings that provide information about social services.

The illiteracy rate among Rohingya is estimated to be 80 percent, and even higher among women.

Each day after class, Rehana is expected to return home by 4 pm. Parties are out of the question.

“My parents don’t like it when girls go outside. They say it’s rude,” she explains.

Many of her friends are already married. “I tell my parents I’m too young and I have to study more.”

Watch Dateline's 'Myanmar's Killing Fields' below.