Refugee reels at ash desecration

By ALAN PERROTT

Yen Tran says her husband was a man who watched over his family and friends - and he still does so, even in death.

Mrs Tran, a Vietnamese refugee, has endured a life few in New Zealand can comprehend, so returning home on Tuesday evening to find she had been burgled was not such a shock.

What did devastate her was that the thieves also desecrated the small memorial she had created for her husband, Cuong Pham, in the lounge of her Papatoetoe flat.

In their frenzied search for valuables, the memorial was destroyed and Mr Pham's ashes were tossed on to the floor.

"I'm not a materialistic person, but when I saw my husband on the floor I was terrified. How dare they do that!"

But she believes the sight of ashes and small pieces of bone shocked the thieves into bolting before they could take all of her belongings.

"My husband scared them away. If you damage or disturb someone's remains it offends their spirit. And they never forgive you."

Cuong Pham and his staunchly Catholic family were forced from Vietnam after the writer and schoolteacher wrote a book critical of the communist regime.

Despite suffering from cancer and sharing a tiny room in a Kuala Lumpur refugee camp with three other families, Mr Pham spent the couple's remaining savings smuggling his friends out of Vietnam. Mrs Tran is still bitter over the way those friends later turned their backs on her husband's requests for small sums of money to help his family while he was in hospital.

Mr Pham died eight years ago, two years before his wife and daughter, Quynh, arrived in Auckland.

Life has made Mrs Tran a private person, distrustful of others and determined to make her own way in a strange country where she has no extended family.

After working as a hairdresser, she saved enough money to enrol in a graphic design course at Manukau Institute of Technology.

The theft of her computer was just another bitter blow.

"But I know God loves me very much. I'm a survivor. I've lived through many things, but I only want to do good and look after my daughter."

Mrs Tran believes God played his own role in helping her during the burglary.

After driving into the city, Mrs Tran and 12-year-old Quynh spent a frustrating hour trying to coax her car into life.

"I only got it a month ago and I've never had any trouble with it before so I think God held me there. If I had got home on time they may have still been there and they might have made trouble for me.

"I don't understand people here. Nobody is starving, why do they need to take things like that?"

Papatoetoe police believe the burglary is connected to a string of break-ins in the suburb and warn residents to be wary.