Kurdish writer and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani has been detained and marooned on Manus Island for five years by the Australian government.
Seeking refuge from persecution in his own country, Behrouz has committed no crime, he has been held without charge. The refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru have suffered the most inhumane conditions and to date twelve have died while in immigration detention. Throughout this time Behrouz has kept writing, under impossible conditions. And now, we have his book – No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, translated from the Farsi by Omid Tofighian.
Seeking refuge from persecution in his own country, Behrouz has committed no crime, he has been held without charge. The refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru have suffered the most inhumane conditions and to date twelve have died while in immigration detention. Throughout this time Behrouz has kept writing, under impossible conditions. And now, we have his book – No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, translated from the Farsi by Omid Tofighian.
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People say that (writers) are pretty powerless: we don’t have an army, we don’t have a bureaucracy. But if that were true, then why would writers be arrested?... Because the spoken word is powerful.
