Behrouz Boochani: Journalist in exile
Persevering on Manus Island.
Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani is known among fellow asylum seekers as The Reporter. Detained on Manus Island since August 2013, he works up to 18 hours a day, filing stories, photos, film footage and social media posts, sending out documents and information, and responding to many media requests for comment. Bearing witness.
Boochani has been short-listed for the 2017 Freedom of Expression Award, given by London-based human rights group X index for “courageous, high-impact and determined journalism that exposes censorship and threats to free expression”. This recognition has been a long time coming. Boochani struggled to be heard in his first years of incarceration.
“I started to work against this system on the first day they exiled me here,” he says. “In the first two years, I worked under a false name and as an unknown source. I sent out my writing in very restricted conditions. We are in a remote prison. It’s hard to work with the lack of technology and most of my writings are on a small mobile phone.”
Boochani has struggled to have his work acknowledged. “I feel I have been denied my identity as a journalist and writer,” he says. “There have been times when journalists have published a story based on information I’ve given them and they have referred to me only as a refugee. I’m doing the same job as other journalists in Australia or elsewhere.” Boochani sees this as part of a wider problem: refugees being denied their stories and reduced to their victimhood.
Boochani worked as a journalist in Iran before he fled in fear for his safety. Born in the city of Ilam in 1983, he graduated from Tarbiat Madares University in Tehran with a masters’ degree in geopolitics. He worked as a freelance journalist for several Iranian newspapers, publishing articles on Middle East politics, sport and Kurdish culture, and co-founded the Kurdish magazine Werya, documenting Kurdish aspirations for cultural freedom.
On February 17, 2013, officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ransacked the Werya offices in Ilam and imprisoned six of his colleagues. Away in Tehran at the time, Boochani wrote about the incident on the website Iranian Reporters and his report was widely circulated.
Boochani went into hiding. Having been interrogated previously, he was in grave danger. He fled Iran on May 23 and tried to cross to Australia, but the boat sank. He was rescued by fishermen and returned to Indonesia, where he was jailed. In July, he tried again and became one of 75 asylum seekers intercepted by the Australian Navy. Detained first on Christmas Island, he was transferred to the Manus Island Immigration Detention Centre in late August 2013.
“On Christmas Island I asked for asylum in Australia. I told Immigration I am a journalist, but I did not get a respectful response. I was wondering why it was not important for them. I said to Immigration: ‘Don’t exile me. Don’t send me to Manus. I am a writer.’ They did not care.”
Comparing the challenges of writing in Iran to those on Manus Island, Boochani says: “In Iran you don’t have the right to criticise the system. On Manus you can write anything you like, but your voice gets lost in the face of Australian government propaganda.
“In some ways, my situation is the same as it was in Iran. I have the same fears. I don’t feel safe in this prison. Four people died on this island and I always worry I may come to harm. Last year I had a suspicious accident when a basketball ring toppled over and struck my head. It was recorded on camera, but authorities did not allow me to view the footage and have refused my requests for an investigation.”
Boochani’s work extends beyond journalism. He has collaborated with human rights agencies, reporting on abuses occurring at the centre. “I work with lawyers, attend meetings with officials as a representative, and work with refugees planning hunger strikes or protests.”
Boochani was deeply affected by the murder of fellow Kurdish-Iranian Reza Barati in February 2014. They met on Christmas Island and became close. Both hailed from the city of Ilam. Boochani reported extensively on Barati’s murder and on the deaths, through medical neglect, of Iranian detainee Hamid Khazaie and Sudanese refugee Faysal Ishak Ahmed. Typically, his profiles depict diverse facets of their life stories, conveying their full humanity.
“It’s hard to work in such a distressing environment,” he says. “Many people are at the end of their suffering. Many are afraid of Immigration. I can’t work on their cases and have to write in generalities.”
Despite the ongoing crises, the many demands upon his time, and the constant undertow of tension, Boochani has been prolific in a range of media.. In 2016 he shot a full-length documentary on his mobile phone. Despite the technical limitations, it is a poetic, hypnotic film that conveys the soul-destroying monotony of indefinite detention.
He is also working on a book that depicts his ill-fated boat journey from Indonesia and his years of incarceration. Boochani writes with narrative flair and an eye for the startling image. The book documents the endless grind, the daily humiliations, the relentless heat, the queues for food and medicines — the Kafkaesque nightmare. It is a personal tale, and also the tale of 900 men denied their liberty, watching the prime of their lives slipping by. “It is torture,” Boochani says. “And the responsibility lies with the Australian government.”
He also writes of his retreats into nature, the solace he finds in the sea and the tropical forests, and his growing appreciation of Manus Island culture and its history of colonial exploitation.
In the early years, journalism doubled as a means of maintaining his sanity between descents into depression. Boochani was buoyed by his daily contact with trauma worker Janet Galbraith, who arranged for his writings to be translated from Farsi into English. Having to rely on translation has been an added source of frustration. “I really appreciate my translators, especially Moones Mansoubi in Sydney, who has been with me for a long time. But I wish I could write as well in English as I do in Kurdish or Persian.”
Boochani is elated at his short listing for this year’s Freedom of Expression Award and at the support he has received from organisations such as PEN International, Reporters without Borders and, more recently, MEAA. “With this international recognition I can fight more effectively in exposing this cruel system. It’s important for me to get support from journalists and artists because it shows they respect me. It means they deeply understand that I’m working because of my responsibility as a journalist.”
Behrouz Boochani is driven by a sense of mission and an eye for the bigger picture. “We are in a moment in history in which Western countries are violating international conventions and laws,” he says. “These are conventions they themselves established. I think this is dangerous for humanity’s future.”
“In a philosophical sense, we have to acknowledge we are human and therefore we don’t have any choice but to trust in humanity. When we are alone, where can go, except to reach out to humanity? This is our only real shelter.”
Arnold Zable is a Melbourne writer, novelist and freelance journalist.
Eaten Fish is an Iranian cartoonist who has been detained on Manus Island since 2013.
This piece is from Issue 88 (March 2017) of the Walkley Magazine.
MEAA is lobbying the federal government to find a humane resettlement outcome for Behrouz Boochani and his fellow asylum seekers, cartoonist Eaten Fish and actor Mehdi Savari.
