December 29, 2017
After more than four yearsin immigration detention in the middle of the South Pacific, the Iranian cartoonist known as “Eaten Fish” has a new view: the fjords of Norway.
Eaten Fish — the pen name of cartoonist Ali Dorani — arrived in Stavanger, Norway, December 17 after the city agreed to host him for at least the next two years through the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). ICORN partners with cities around the globe to provide shelter to writers and artists at risk, providing a safe place for them to continue their craft without harassment or persecution.
In an ICORN press re-lease shortly after arriving, Eaten Fish said of his new home: “I met a lot of lovely people who care for me and who worked hard so I could come to Norway. I am in a fairy-tale city. The safest place I’ve ever been in. My journey has just started.”
Stavanger is a city of 135,000 people on the Atlantic coast of Norway, which has become the prosperous center for Norway’s North Sea oil industry.
Eaten Fish’s long ordeal began August 6, 2013, when he was intercepted at sea while trying to reach Australia from Indonesia in a smuggler’s boat. It was that act of being plucked from the sea, just as he arrived in Australian waters, that inspired his pen name and logo: a fish bone.
Eventually, Eaten Fish was transferred to the Manus Island detention camp in Papua New Guinea, set up and paid for by Australia. Eaten Fish had the bad luck of arriving in Australian waters just a month after the country instituted a strict policy of denying entry to any asylum-seekers arriving by boat, even for processing.
Ever since, Australia has been widely criticized for the conditions at the Manus Island camp and the United Nations has declared the country’s policy of indefinite detention at the offshore camp “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”
Eaten Fish says the camp was problematic from the start. He suffers from severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which is a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and walks of life, and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings.
Eaten Fish says he was also harassed and sexually abused while at the Manus camp with no help forthcoming. In February 2016, the cartoonist went on a hunger strike for 19 days before being persuaded to start eating again. After that, he was put in isolation at the Manus Island camp. In August 2017, he was moved to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea — for medical treatment and housed in a hotel with other refugees — where he remained until leaving for Norway.
In the end, it was arguably social media that saved him, National Public Radio’s KUOW in Seattle, Washington, reported. Detainees at Manus Island had some access to the Internet and many eventually acquired smartphones. In 2014, while online, Eaten Fish learned about an art exhibition being planned in Australia to protest the country’s policy toward asylum-seekers. It would feature art and poetry by people in the country’s offshore immigration detention system. The exhibit was called “Our Beautiful Names” because detainees are called by their numbers, not their names.
Eaten Fish sent in some cartoons via Facebook and it reached the organizer, Australian activist and poet Janet Galbraith. Galbraith responded and took up Eaten Fish’s case. She started communicating with him constantly via WhatsApp and the occasional phone call; she also publicized his plight, staged protests and pressured the Australian government to end its policy of offshore detention. She also traveled to Manus Island, often, to try to speak with Eaten Fish. “I visited Manus many times,” she told KUOW, ”but Ali was either not allowed to leave the prison camp or — as was the case the last time — was too afraid to leave isolation.”
Galbraith’s online activism about Eaten Fish eventually reached Australian cartoonist Andrew Marlton, who became another WhatsApp pen pal. Marlton, who goes by the pen name “First Dog on the Moon,” became both a friend and artistic mentor to the refugee. Eaten Fish would respond with cartoons that showed the stark, depressing conditions at the Manus Island Camp.
Marlton used his position as a cartoonist for The Guardian’s Australia edition to draw attention to the plight of Eaten Fish and conditions in the offshore detention camps. In July 2016, he drew a multi-panel cartoon about what daily life at the camp was like for Eaten Fish.
In 2016 the human rights group Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) got involved after learning about Eaten Fish through one of its board members. Cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar, a CRNI member who had fled Iran in 2003 with the help of CRNI and ICORN, started messaging Eaten Fish in Farsi. They used Telegram, a messaging app popular among Iranians because of its strong emphasis on privacy protection for its users. Sometimes the two would message back and forth for hours at a stretch. Other times they wouldn’t talk for weeks.
“He used to send me cartoons and pictures,” Kowsar told KUOW. “There were times when I was really worried about him, that he would harm himself. He’s a talented person and he’s a very sensitive person.”
Later that year, CRNI chose Eaten Fish for its annual Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award. Eaten Fish received the award via Telegram message app from Kowsar during the annual convention of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC). Kowsar encouraged the roomful of satirists to draw cartoons in support of Eaten Fish and post them online. They did and the idea spread globally through the hashtag #addafish.
CRNI then connected Galbraith to ICORN and used its diplomatic connections to communicate with Australian officials in Washington about Eaten Fish and his failing health. ICORN moved swiftly and, on December 16, Galbraith finally met Eaten Fish when she showed up in Port Moresby to accompany him on flight to Norway.
Galbraith was ”very, very pleased that Eaten Fish has been released after all these years,” she told KUOW. ”It was wonderful to finally be able to hug each other and it was a privilege to be able to do this knowing that he was now moving toward freedom.” But Galbraith said the moment is also bittersweet. “Sweet because Eaten Fish is now free and safe, and bitter because so many other people remain hostage to the state of Australia and its policies in off-shore prison camps.”
As an ICORN “city of refuge,” Stavanger, Norway will provide Eaten Fish with an apartment, a monthly stipend and comprehensive medical and psychological help. Marlton told Radio New Zealand that Eaten Fish will need all the help he can get. “He’s very broken because of his experience. He’s very unwell.”
Kowsar says he is hopeful. One of the first messages he received from Eaten Fish after he arrived in Norway was encouraging. “He said he was able to buy a Doogh,” a carbonated yogurt drink popular in Iran. “That showed me he was very happy.”