Kurdish asylum seeker in Australia shoots film in secret

MANUS ISLAND, Australia (Kurdistan24) – A Kurdish asylum detainee has secretly sent out a movie about life in an Australian offshore detention facility.

Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani has secretly made a movie in an Australian jail on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG), where he has been since 2013 after fleeing his home country of Iran.

Using his cellphone, Boochani recorded the day to day life of refugees who are kept in the notorious facility of Manus Island which has made headlines with riots and hunger strikes, including prisoners sewing their lips.

The result is a full-length feature film, smuggled over the internet in small clips, beneath the radar of guards.

Boochani sent the clips to Dutch-Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani who edited and released the motion picture.

The 88-minute film called “Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time” does not focus on violence.

Instead, the film portrays the day to day uncertainty and fear in the life of prisoners whose crime has been escaping destruction and oppression in their home countries.

“Chauka” is a bird native to Manus that starts singing at the same time every morning. It is also the name given to the detention center’s solitary confinement area.

The Australian government, which says the detention is meant to stop people smugglers, is hoping the US would resettle 1,250 refugees from Manus and Nauru.

A PNG court ruled Manus was unconstitutional and the facility is set to close by November.

Fazel Chegani was another Iranian Kurd in his early 30s who was found dead in November 2015 under a cliff off of Christmas Island, located in the Indian Ocean 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth.

Chegani had reportedly escaped the Immigration Detention Facility two days earlier.

The young man’s death reportedly caused a riot inside the highly-secured center where media is not allowed.

Tara Fatehi, the founder of Adelaide Kurdish Youth Society, told Kurdistan24 in a previous interview that, “Iranian Kurdistan, unlike Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, does not have the attention of the front page news or hundreds of international journalists watching.”

“People don’t know of the horrors that Kurds in Iran have to endure,” she continued.

“They suffer in silence and to know that migrants had to endure that suffering and to never be given a sanctuary makes me feel as though I have failed my people,” Fatehi added.

Chegani was the second Kurdish man to have died in an Australian refugee detention center.

In 2014, Reza Barati, a 23-year-old Iranian Kurd, died of multiple head injuries in the PNG camp.

His death during a riot at an Australian detention center for asylum seekers exposed conditions at the Manus Island facility, which a former interpreter has described as worse than a war zone.

“Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time” will be screened later this year in Australia.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany