Behrouz Boochani (Persian: بهروز بوچانی; born 23 July 1983) is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer living in New Zealand. He was held in the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea from 2013 until its closure in 2017. He remained on the island before being moved to Port Moresby along with the other detainees around September 2019. On 14 November 2019 he arrived in Christchurch on a one-month visa, to speak at a special event organised by WORD Christchurch on 29 November, as well as other speaking events. In December 2019, his one month visa to New Zealand expired and he remained on an expired visa until being granted refugee status in July 2020, at which time he became a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury.
Boochani is the co-director, along with Iranian film maker Arash Kamali Sarvestani, of the documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, has published numerous articles in leading media internationally about the plight of refugees held by the Australian government on Manus Island, and has won several awards.
He began his journalistic career writing for the student newspaper at Tarbiat Modares University, before working as a freelance journalist for several Iranian newspapers such as Kasbokar Weekly, Qanoon, and Tehran-based Etemaad as well as the Iranian Sports Agency.[4][5] He wrote articles on Middle East politics, minority rights and the survival of Kurdish culture.[6] In secret, he taught children and adults a particular Kurdish dialect from the region of Ilam, regarded as their mother tongue.[7] He co-founded and produced the Kurdish magazine Werya (also spelt Varia), which he regarded as his most important work,[4] and which attracted the attention of the Iranian authorities because of its political and social content. The magazine promoted Kurdish culture and politics; Boochani felt it very important for the Kurdish city of Ilam to retain its Kurdish identity, language and culture. As a member of the Kurdish Democratic party, outlawed in Iran, and the National Union of Kurdish Students, he was watched closely.[5]
In February 2013, the offices of Werya were raided by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,[8] which was founded after the 1979 revolution to protect the country's Islamic Republic system and to quell uprisings of "deviant movements", and had previously threatened Boochani with detention.[5] Boochani was not in the office that day, but 11 of Boochani's colleagues were arrested, several of whom were subsequently imprisoned.[9] After publishing news of the arrests online and the news spreading globally, Boochani went into hiding for three months and on 23 May 2013, fled Iran and made his way to Indonesia via Southeast Asia.[5]
In detention
Who was Behrouz Boochani?
Freedom
On 14 November 2019, Boochani left Manus and traveled to New Zealand on a one-month visa to speak at the WORD Christchurch festival in Christchurch.[10][11][12] Boochani said upon arrival that he was savouring life as a "free man".[13] The US has technically accepted him as part of the “refugee swap” deal, but now that he has left PNG, he fears that his status is uncertain. If the US offer is revoked, he will look at the possibilities of applying to another country.[14]
Boochani feels a sense of duty towards the men he was forced to leave behind on PNG. Apart from those who have died, he said that about three-quarters of the refugees and asylum seekers sent to the Manus camp since 2012 have left, to Australia, the US or other countries. However he is deeply concerned that some remain trapped there, especially the 46 who are being held in Bomana prison in Port Moresby.[14]
Still in New Zealand in late February 2020, Boochani, responding to Peter Dutton's comment that he would never be allowed into Australia, said that he has never said that he wanted to go to Australia. It was not yet known whether he had applied for asylum in New Zealand.[15][16]
On 24 July 2020, the New Zealand Government granted refugee status to Boochani, allowing him to stay in New Zealand indefinitely and to apply for a residency visa.[17][18] On that day it was also announced that Boochani had been appointed a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow of the University of Canterbury, based at Kā Waimaero, the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre.[19]
Works from Manus Island
While living in the Manus Island detention centre Boochani has had many of his articles published by online news and other media, such as "The Day My Friend Hamid Kehazaei Died" in The Guardian[20] and "Life on Manus: Island of the Damned" in The Saturday Paper,[21] and others by HuffPost,[22]Financial Times,[23] and the New Matilda.[24]Guardian journalist Ben Doherty, upon accepting the Amnesty International Australia award on Behrouz's behalf in 2017, said that Boochani "...rightly, sees himself as a working journalist on Manus Island, whose job it is to be bear witness to the injustices and the violence and the privation of offshore detention".[25] Some of his articles have been published on Kurdish websites in Iran.[9]
He has also published poems online[26][27] and narrates his story in the award-winning animated short documentary film Nowhere Lines: Voices of Manus Island, made by UK film-maker Lucas Schrank in 2015).[28][29][30] In 2017 he was the subject and co-producer of the award-winning Until We Are All Free, a graphic narrative in collaboration with Positive/Negatives and illustrator, Alex Mankiewicz.
In February 2018, he wrote an article about the murder of his friend Reza Barati during riots at the camp in 2014 and the injustice of the events that followed. Included is a poem about his "gentle giant and best friend", called Our Mothers, a poem for Reza.[33] In March 2018 the full-length documentary film, Stop the Boats! (the title reflecting a government slogan), directed by Simon V. Kurian, was released, featuring Boochani and others.[34]
At the end of the 2019 short documentary film Manus, made by Angus McDonald, Boochani narrates his poem called "Manus Poem" in Persian.[35]
In July 2018, his memoir No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison was published by Picador. Written in prose and poetry, it chronicles his boat journey from Indonesia, his detainment on Manus Island and the lives (and deaths) of other prisoners, as well as observations on the Australian guards and the local Papuan people. The book was laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone in Persian in fragments via WhatsApp and translated from the Persian to English by his friend Omid Tofighian.[36] He posits that the prison is a Kyriarchal system (a term borrowed from feminist theory),[37] one where different forms of oppression intersect; oppression is not random but purposeful, designed to isolate and create friction amongst prisoners, leading to despair and broken spirits.[2]
In his foreword to the work, Australian writer Richard Flanagan refers to Boochani as "a great Australian writer".[38]Louis Klee wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "In a decade of Australian politics defined by the leadership spill—a spilt decade, in which any meaningful progress on the issues that define Australia, be it Indigenous affairs, refugee politics, or climate change, effectively stalled—Boochani's witnessing has elevated him to a paradoxical position. Today he may well be the most significant political voice in a country he has never visited".[39]
No Friend But the Mountains won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction on 31 January 2019.[40][36] There were questions about Boochani's eligibility for both prizes because entrants had been previously limited to Australian citizens or permanent residents, but he was given an exemption by prize administrators and the judges were unanimous in recognising its literary excellence. Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams said that the judges thought that the story of what's happening on Manus Island essentially is an Australian story, and that "made it completely consistent with the intention of the awards".[41] In an interview with the writer Arnold Zable following the award, Boochani said that he has many conflicting thoughts on it, but he sees it as a "political statement from the literary and creative arts community in Australia, and all those who do not agree with the government's thinking".[42]
In April 2019 the book was given a Special Award in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards,[43] whose judges called it "an outstanding work of literature in its own right", apart from being "...remarkable for the circumstances of its production...[and]...compelling and shocking content".[44]
On 2 May, it was announced that the work had won the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for General non-fiction book of the year.[45]
Afilm of the book is due to be made in 2021, shot mainly in Australia.[15] Boochani said the new film should incorporate some of his previous work, and that of his fellow asylum seekers, as a record of part of Australian history.[16]
The film is to be directed by Rodd Rathjen and has been announced as one of the projects selected for the virtual 15th Ontario Creates International Financing Forum (iff) in association with Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Rathjen will work in close collaboration with Boochani (who takes on the roles of story consultant and associate producer) and writer and producer Ákos Armont.[46]
Remain (video installation)
Boochani collaborated with Iranian-born Melbourne photographer Hoda Afshar on a two-channel video work, Remain, which includes spoken poetry by him and Iranian poet Bijan Elahi. Afshar describes her method as "staged documentary", in which the men on the island are able to "re-enact their narratives with their own bodies and [gives] them autonomy to narrate their own stories." The video was shown as part of the Primavera 2018 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, from 9 November 2018 to 3 February 2019. Both Afshar and Boochani believe that art can hit home in a more powerful way, after the public has become immune to images of and journalism about suffering.[47][48][49] Writing about an award-winning portrait of himself by Afshar taken as part of the Remain project, Boochani says that the project would be part of the creation of a "new artistic language that is not beholden to the framework of colonialism", and in accordance with the "Manus Prison Theory".[50]
Manus (play)
Boochani is one of the subjects of, as well as chief collaborator on,[42] the play Manus written by playwright Nazanin Sahamizadeh in 2017,[51] which tells the story of eight Iranians who fled Iran for Australia. It relates the stories of their lives in Iran and their experiences in detention on Manus, including details of the riot in February 2014, which led to the murder of one of them, Reza Barati, by locals. It was performed in Tehran in February–March 2017, running for a month in the Qashqai Hall of the City Theatre Complex and attended by nearly 3000 people,[52] including Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, and Australian diplomats.[53] It was also performed in two cities in Bangladesh in October 2017, at the Chittagong Shilpakala AcademyinChittagong and in Dhaka. The playwright Sahamizadeh said it was performed there as a part of its international tour to express compassion and solidarity with Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who had sought protection in Bangladesh recently.[54] It will be directed by the author and produced by the Verbatim Theatre Group at the Adelaide Festival in March 2019.[55][42]
Awards and recognition
Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award in October 2016.[56][57][58]
On the shortlist of four for the Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award in the category of Journalism in 2017.[59]
Tampa Award, April 2018, presented by Rural Australians for Refugees, for "selfless and substantial contribution to the welfare of refugees".[60]
STARTTS Humanitarian Award (Media), for "Media outlets, journalists or media officers supporting, prioritising and/or raising awareness of refugee issues".[61]
Voltaire Award, Empty Chair Award, awarded July 2018 by Liberty Australia.[62]
Anna Politkovskaya Award for Journalism, October 2018.[63][64]
Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Award, October 2018.[65]
Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction, January 2019, for No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison..[36][40]
Special Award, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, April 2019, for No Friend But the Mountains.[44][43]
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, April 2019, for No Friend But the Mountains.[45]
A portrait of Boochani by artist Angus McDonald won the People's Choice Award in the Archibald Prize, a prestigious Australian portraiture art award, in 2020.[68][69]
"Behrouz Boochani". (Prose and poetry). Writing through Fences. Archived from the original on 17 February 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^ abBoochani, Behrouz (24–30 November 2018). "This human being". No. 232. Translated by Omid Tofighian. The Saturday Paper. Retrieved 16 February 2019. See also his reference to Kyriarchal system in No Friend But the Mountains.
^Boochani, Behrouz (March 2017). "Narrated story". They cannot take the sky: Stories from detention. By numerous narrators. Green, Michael; Dao, Andre; Neville, Angelica; Affleck, Dana; Merope, Sienna (eds.). Allen & Unwin. ISBN9781760292805. An award-winning travelling exhibition of the same name, based on the book, was produced by Behind the Wire.
Tazreiter, Claudia (7 June 2020). "The Emotional Confluence of Borders, Refugees and Visual Culture: The Case of Behrouz Boochani, Held in Australia's Offshore Detention Regime". Critical Criminology. 28 (2). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 193–207. doi:10.1007/s10612-020-09511-7. ISSN1205-8629. S2CID219910195.