February 15, 2019
The winner of Australia’s top literary prize this year is an Iranian who will not be able to come pick up his cash award – because he is detained on Manus Island as an illegal immigrant.
Behrouz Boochani won the State of Victoria prize for literature for his debut novel, “No Friend But the Mountains.” The cash prize comes to about $90,000.
But Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian, has been kept on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, for the past six years in the Australian offshore detention center located there. Australia’s tough immigration policies forces asylum seekers who try to reach Australia by boat—but not other means—to stay on Manus or Nauru while their claims are processed, albeit very slowly.
“My main aim has always been for the people in Australia and around the world to understand how deeply this system has tortured innocent people on Manus and Nauru in a systematic way for almost six years,” he told the Guardian of Australia. “I hope this award will bring more attention to our situation, and create change, and end this barbaric policy.”
Boochani added that he hoped the award would bring “enormous shame” to the Australian government.
The book is an autobiographical account of Boochani’s attempt to journey from Indonesia to Australia and his subsequent incarceration.
He wrote his prize-winning book one text message at a time and he regularly tweets from the island – when he can access the Internet. The book was written in Farsi and later translated by an Iranian-Australian.
The entry guidelines for the prize stipulate that writers must be Australian citizens or permanent residents, but the prize organizers made an exception in his case.
The 35-year-old is a journalist, who regularly writes for the Guardian. He fled Iran after officials raided the offices of his magazine.
In 2013, he tried to cross from Indonesia to Australia, but his boat was intercepted and he was transferred to Manus Island.
He has continued to write articles while on the island and this is his first book.
Australia defends its policies saying that the journey the asylum seekers make is controlled by criminal gangs, and the government has a duty to stop it.