Behrouz Boochani: The refugee who won Australia's literary prize
SYDNEY, Feb 2 (AFP) - When Kurdish- Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani won Australia's most valuable literary prize this week, he could not attend the ceremony to accept it.
But as he has done for almost six years, living in Papua New Guinea under Canberra's harsh offshore detention policy, the asylum- seeker still managed to speak out. “With humility, I would like to say that this award is a victory. It is a victory not only for us, but for literature and art and above all, it is a victory for humanity,” he said in pre-recorded acceptance speech given to media. “A victory against a system that has never recognised us as human beings. It is a victory against a system that has reduced us to numbers,” the 35-year-old added. Boochani, who was sent to Manus after fleeing Iran in 2013, won the Victorian Prize for Literature for his book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.
Under a harsh policy meant to deter asylum-seekers from reaching Australia by boat, Canberra has for years sent arrivals to remote Pacific camps on Nauru and PNG's Manus Island for processing, barring them from settling in Australia.
The UN, rights groups and health professionals have slammed Canberra for its treatment of asylum seekers, as stories of dire living conditions have emerged from the camps over the years. Boochani has been at the centre of many of these reports -- the loudest voice within the Manus asylum seekers, providing a key source for journalists and rights groups while documenting the conditions himself. His journalism has been published widely in Australian media, he has given speeches remotely to universities around the world and produced a film from the island shot on his phone -- all while continuing to write about Iranian and Kurdish politics for publications in Iran.
Born in Ilam, west of Iran in 1983, Behrouz graduated from Tarbiat Moallem and Tarbiat Modares Universities in Tehran with a masters degree in political science, political geography and geopolitics. “I left Iran because I didn't want to live in prison, or be killed by the system there,” he told AFP from Man us Saturday. “Unfortunately I ended up in another prison, but a prison that was created by a country that claims it is a liberal democracy.”