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Behrouz Boochani / Facebook
Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani
A journalist and asylum seeker detained for years in Australia on Thursday received the country's most important literary prize
Behrouz Boochani journalist Iranian on asylum applications and retained for years by Australia on a Pacific Island, won the country's first literary prize. The journalist of Kurdish origin wrote the work in The Friend of the Mountains: written from the Manus Prison to through the WhatsApp detention center .
The prize gave the refugee journalist more than 60,000 euros. "It's a very paradoxical feeling," said the author at the BBC, originally from the island of Manus, Papua New Guinea.
"I am very happy because we are attentive to this problem and many people are aware of this, and on the other hand I feel that I do not have the right to celebrate. I have friends who suffer at this place . "
The journalist stays on this remote island because he is not yet allowed to enter Australia. For the future, Boochani wants "freedom, to leave this island and start a new life."
The book was written in Farsi for years and the chapters were sent as messages written for the purpose of a translator using WhatsApp . " WhatsApp is like my office. We can not write on paper because the guards have always attacked and searched for our belongings."
According to the BBC, the journalist has been arrested since 2013, date of his arrival in Australia. as an asylum seeker, which has not been granted so far. "I did not want to go to jail in Iran and so I left the country, but Australia put me behind bars for years."
The boat crossing between Indonesia and Australia did not go as planned and was stopped by trying to enter without a visa. The country's immigration law states that anyone attempting to travel to Australia by boat in search of asylum must be stopped and taken to a camp located outside the country – she thus avoids deaths at sea in the hands of traffickers .
The journalist is on the island of Manu, Papua New Guinea, for at least six years, with 600 other refugees.
The jury considered the work " as a voice of testimony, an act of survival" . A cry of resistance. "Boochani has produced an impressive work of art and a critical theory that eludes mere description," say the jurors of the award. "This is a detailed and critical study and a description of what Boochani calls the" Manus Prison Theory "… It gives a fresh insight into the actions of the world. Australia and Australia. "
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