It was an honour to meet and listen to Behrouz Boochani in Parliament House today.
Behrouz is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer. He was detained on Manus Island from 2013 until 2017, where he wrote ‘No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison,’ which recorded his experience on Manus through prose and poetry.
Behrouz now lives in New Zealand, where he was granted refugee status in 2020. Today he spoke to us about the need for Australia to be brave, to learn the lessons of our history.
Australia is capable of a more compassionate and sensible framework for processing people seeking asylum in Australia. Our country needs strong border protections, but the current detention arrangements are a cruel stopgap that we should have dismantled long ago.
