The Refugee Action Coalition has called Australia’s apparent attempt to walk away from its responsibilities for the refugees it dumped in Papua New Guinea an outrage.

Australia announced last week that by the end of this year it will end its offshore detention arrangement with PNG.

The scheme was declared illegal by the PNG courts five years ago but 124 people, most of whom have been judged to be refugees, remain there.

The coalition’s Ian Rintoul said PNG had no capacity, or desire, to look after these people, or search for third countries to take them off their hands.

“I think it is just a continuation of the Australian government trying to distance itself from the atrocities they are responsible for in Manus Island in Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“They have been trying for many years to try and distance themselves from the responsibility for people that they took there illegally, according to PNG law, but who they take no responsibility for.”

Last month Australia signed a new long term commitment with Nauru to continue to run its detention facility — the only place where Australia will send people trying to arrive on the mainland illegally by boat.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Immigration New Zealand has confirmed that Behrouz Boochani has been given refugee status in New Zealand.

Boochani has been in New Zealand since November. He had travelled to Christchurch for a writers’ festival on a one-month visa and was supported by Amnesty International.

He was detained in Manus Island and in Port Moresby for six years under the Australian government’s policy to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat.

READ MORE: The journalist who became the victim of Australia’s punitive detention policies

He catapulted to worldwide fame in 2019 after his book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literature prize.

He wrote the book with WhatsApp on his phone.

Boochani’s 374-page book, detailing his experiences in detention, was written in secret and was smuggled out of the detention centre via hundreds of text messages to his translators and editors in Australia.

Boochani discovered he had been granted asylum by New Zealand almost seven years to the day from the moment he was arrested by the Australian Navy, taken to Christmas Island, and subsequently flown to PNG.

Moved to transit centres
Following the closure of the Manus Island centre in 2017, Boochani and his fellow detainees were moved to refugee transit centres near the island’s main town of Lorengau, and later, to the country’s capital Port Moresby.

The executive director of Amnesty, Meg de Ronde, said it is wonderful news that Boochani has been given asylum.

“This means that he’s now a free man. He is free from the persecution as a Kurdish journalist. He’s free from the persecution of Australia’s torturous detention system and he is able to enjoy his life as anyone should be able to under our human rights system.”

She said 400 asylum-seekers like him were still trapped in limbo however, and it was time for Australia to accept New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of those refugees per year.

“Some of them are still on Nauru, some of them are still in Papua New Guinea and some are now in various hotels in Australia in very poor conditions,de Ronde said.

“This issue continues to go on, and Australia needs to act to ensure no more people are put through the torturous regime that Behrooz Boochani was.”

Last month the National Party said it was surprised New Zealand immigration officials did not consult their Australian counterparts before granting a visa to Boochani.

Excluded from Australia
The party’s immigration spokesperson, Stuart Smith, said Boochani appeared to have been excluded from Australia, making him ineligible to come to New Zealand without a special direction.

He said despite that, the response to a parliamentary written question showed no contact was made with Australian officials before he was granted the visa.

“Which was surprising given the high profile nature of Boochani and the fact that the Australian foreign minister said that Boochani would never set foot in Australia.”

Boochani travelled through the Philippines to get to Auckland so that his flight did not touch down in Australia.

Green Party human rights spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman – herself an Iranian refugee – said it was a day of celebration.

“I’m just so excited for us and for him and so grateful for our refugee authorities demonstrating – at least to Australia – that it is possible to actually process and asylum seeker fairly.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

An Iranian asylum-seeker detained in Papua New Guinea under Australian asylum laws has won Australia’s most valuable literary prize for a book he reportedly wrote using the online messaging service WhatsApp, reports France 24/AFP.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurd who has been held on PNG’s Manus Island since 2013, was awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature yesterday, said a statement on a government website for the state of Victoria.

The journalist and filmmaker was awarded the A$100,000 (NZ$106,000) prize for his book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.

READ MORE: The book written one text at a time

He will receive an additional A$25,000 after it also won the non-fiction category.

“(Boochani’s) award was accepted by the book’s translator Omid Tofighian, who worked with Boochani over five years to bring the stories to life,” the state website said.

-Partners-

Media reports said Boochani wrote the work on his phone and sent it to Tofighian bit-by-bit in text messages.

This was because he felt unsafe in the guarded camp, which was shut last year after a local court ruling and the asylum-seekers moved elsewhere on the island.

For years Canberra has sent asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to Manus Island or Nauru in the Pacific for processing, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

The harsh policy is meant to deter people embarking on treacherous sea journeys, but the United Nations and other rights groups have criticised the camps’ conditions and long detention periods.

Boochani’s book beat 27 other shortlisted works published last year in Australia to win the overall prize.

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By RNZ Pacific

A refugee journalist detained on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island says winning an Italian award for investigative journalism could end censorship of offshore detention in the Australian media.

Behrouz Boochani, who has made a documentary and written a book during his five years in exile, has won the Anna Politkovskaya Prize for Press Freedom from the Italian magazine Internazionale.

Boochani regularly contributes to The Guardian and the Saturday Paper in Australia but said other publications supported the Australian government’s efforts to restrict information about its offshore detention regime.

READ MORE: Australia needs a moral revolution

“The Australian government couldn’t keep 2000 people, including children and women, in a harsh prison camps on Manus and Nauru without systematic censorship,” Boochani said.

“I have many experiences working with the media in Australia and also internationally over the past five years and I know that the government always tries to manage the information and censor the situation,” he said.

-Partners-

“But after five years I think they are defeated because international media and public opinion are aware completely of what the government has done on Manus and Nauru.”

Condemning a fact
The Guardian reported that the award’s organisers paid tribute to Boochani’s “commitment to condemning a fact which has been intentionally kept out of the spotlight”.

The prize was a symbol of the struggle of the refugees who had spoken out from offshore detention as well as their advocates, human rights defenders and independent journalists who had covered their stories, the journalist said.

“I think it is very important because our work is acknowledged and recognised internationally.”

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) has expressed its deep concern about reports that Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian-Kurdish journalist and regular contributor to Australian publications, was arrested on Manus Island early last Thursday.

He was released later in the day.

READ MORE: Médecins Sans Frontières denied access to refugees as thousands rally in Australia

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) chief executive, Paul Murphy, said Boochani appeared to have been deliberately targeted by Papua New Guinea (PNG) police in the crackdown on November 23 because he was well known as a journalist reporting from inside the detention centre.

“Behrouz has been one of the main sources of factual information about conditions inside the Manus Island detention centre for the past few years, and his reporting has been published in Australia and internationally,” Murphy said.

“His reporting in the finest traditions of journalism has been critical when the Australian and PNG governments have done everything they can to prevent media from having access to the asylum seekers on Manus Island.

“If, as the case appears to be, he has been targeted and arrested because of his profile and his role as a journalist in an attempt to silence him, this is an egregious attack on press freedom that cannot be let stand.”

Like MEAA, JERAA has called on the Australian and PNG governments to inform the public about his safety, and allow him to continue doing the journalistic work he has been for so many months.

Amnesty Award for journalism
Just three weeks ago, Boochani was awarded the Amnesty International Australian Media Award for his journalism from Manus Island.

JERAA president, Matthew Ricketson, was a guest speaker at the awards in Sydney, and testified to the loud applause that greeted the award as well as the heartfelt admiration of his colleague at Guardian Australia, Ben Doherty, who accepted the award in Boochani’s absence.

Professor Ricketson said: “Behrouz Boochani’s reporting has been brave and inspiring, not least because he has been pursuing it while at the same time he has been detained indefinitely.

“Governments for nearly two decades now have been fighting determinedly to hide from public view – and the possibility of public empathy – what has been happening inside offshore detention centres.

“Boochani’s reporting is a vital counterweight to this campaign”.

Earlier this year, MEAA, the journalists’ union, co-ordinated an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, calling for him to be resettled in Australia. Dozens of high-profile journalists and writers co-signed the open letter.

Boochani’s work has been published in The Saturday Paper as well as Guardian Australia, while his film about life inside the Manus detention centre, Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time has been screened at the Sydney and London film festivals. He tweets at @BehrouzBoochani

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