It has been a little over three years now since a judge at the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board restored my existence on paper by granting me refugee status. As moments go, it felt nowhere as sensational as that bus trip out of the Christmas Island dock after days onboard the Emelle, with the sea breeze and a sense of possibility and safety in the air.
But, this time, the promise was real, and I was able to stop running and start living. A hope for the better future that I had longed for during those dark Manus days finally returned, one I had not felt in years. And the hope has stayed alive. In 2020, I became a permanent resident of Canada, the country I now call home. A sense of relief rushed through me again. Becoming a person of legal standing in this great country felt like an incredible milestone for someone who crossed three continents – without papers – in search of a sanctuary.
Since arriving in Toronto, I have tried my best to discover who I am outside my status as a stateless person and former Manus refugee. Sometimes at the University of Toronto, I felt like a bit of an imposter, going through the motions of normal student life while knowing my unusual past set me apart. Certain sights and sounds – like the sight of uniformed officers or the noise of a passing fire truck – would set my nervous system ablaze. In my first year, I attended a seminar on trauma, and was re-traumatised myself when, for lunch, we were asked to line up for sandwiches. Even to this day, I suffer the stomach pains that are a puzzling legacy of the Manus plumbing, shared by many of us. Whether they are a result of the atrocious washroom facilities, the rotten food, or the years of grinding hopelessness, we may never know.
Over time, though, the patterns of work and life started to come more naturally, bringing me a little closer to your average twenty-something young man, if there is such a thing. Keeping busy can be good therapy. Through some of my original connections in Canada, I ended up meeting and getting hired by a start-up that brings tech solutions to humanitarian crises. The job felt like a good fit for someone like me, and it was inspiring to join a team of other motivated people, each trying to make a difference in their own way.
I started to feel normal again: judged for my work and ability to contribute, rather than my immigration status. One amazing thing about Toronto is most people are from somewhere else. Over lunch one day, my boss pointed out how no one on her team was born in Canada. This was typical. You could go to a party and the topic of your national origin might never come up. Or if it did, it was in an equitable, getting-to-know-you way. Like, ‘Oh, you are from Burma? My parents are Polish.’
These are examples of Canada’s famous multiculturalism in action. While it is most prominent in the bigger cities, the commitment to diversity is widely distributed. In fact, it’s core to the values and laws of the country. While there are many reasons this culture sprang up in the first place, it is not upheld by chance. Indeed, it is kept alive and well through deliberate government policy.
That is not to say Canada has not committed great misdeeds as well. Although historians have made the case that the country has more than just two founding cultures – the French, the English, and Indigenous peoples – the relationship between them was hardly equal or peaceful. The French and the British were famously in competition and even at war with each other in the centuries prior to Confederation. At the same time, they were also making cruel strides to colonize Indigenous peoples. Canada only emerged as a nation by building a railroad – the most dangerous section of which was built by Chinese immigrants who were paid significantly less than their white counterparts – bringing in the Mounties, and pushing out everyone who got in the way.
And not just pushing them aside: in the first century after Confederation, the project included taking Indigenous children from their families, forcing them to adopt the culture, religion and language of their abductors, and beating them or letting them die of neglect if they refused – or even if they did not refuse – the force of oppression. The more I read about Canadian history, the more I see a history of land theft and genocide familiar from the history of both my homeland and that of Australia.
Despite these terrible and calculated misdeeds, which have created a legacy of shame and destruction that continues today, there are elements of Canadian culture that are deserving of respect – and indeed, serve as an exemplar for nations around the world.
Maybe because the country evolved out of its relationships with its imperial masters, rather than refusing them outright (as the Americans did, for example), there developed a tradition of compromise and finding common ground in Canada that has served it well, and got it through some tough scrapes and moments of crisis. This is a place where it’s understood that you can only survive with the help of your neighbours, and that those neighbours might be quite different than you.
That appreciation of strangers continues. For decades, Canada has invested in bringing newcomers to the country, and making sure they have the opportunities and resources to fulfil their potential. Even refugees are given attention and financing to help them get the language and training they need to get a foothold in the economy.
Contrast that with Australia, which dedicates vast resources to keeping newcomers out of the country and punishing those who do manage to get in by placing them in boxes. The government has spent $7.618 billion on regional processing since Manus was reopened in 2013, representing $2.44 million to torture each of the 3,127 people sent to offshore detention. This is likely to be an underestimated figure as it does not include other deals such as $40 million in foreign aid to Cambodia where seven refugees were resettled. The pure waste of money and human potential is staggering.
And to what end? To keep a bunch of nativist politicians in power? To shore up the profits of a media company? Whatever the reasons or motivations, like the results, they are unjust and sickening.
At the time of writing, the injustice continues. There are still about 200 guys from Manus trapped in Australia’s refugee detention system, many of them getting close to their ten-year anniversary of detainment, with no end in sight.
Some of the lucky ones have been settled in third countries, like Shamindan in Finland, or Amir in Canada, or the dozens of single men and families who have been settled in the US under a deal struck by President Obama and carried out, miraculously and somewhat remarkably, under Donald Trump. Each person reacts differently to this second chance at life.
Consider Amir, the friend who once helped me hide my cell phone – not just in one secret place, as he took pains to remind me during the writing of this book, but dozens. He finally arrived in Canada in 2019, through a sponsorship application submitted by Stephen Watt. The media spotlight shone bright on Amir’s arrival, and while he was reluctant to be cast as a public refugee, he agreed to talk to journalists in the hope that the coverage might bring more help and attention to the guys he left behind.
Once the media spotlight moved on, to his relief, Amir kept busy making up for lost time. It has been a pleasure to meet with him again in our new adopted country, and watch him use his gifts of intelligence and charm to carve out a new and fulfilling space for himself.
Another story needing no introduction belongs to Behrouz Boochani, who went from shouting his rage from the top of a tree to sharing his story with the world, through his book No Friend But the Mountains. He was the first to open the eyes of the reading public to the grim facts of offshore detention, from the perspective of one who lived and suffered through it. His book won prizes and opened doors, and he continues to raise awareness of refugee issues through his work as a journalist in New Zealand.
Other men who walked the pages of this book have found their own happiness, albeit in a less public fashion. Zakaria, my stalwart friend and leader of the Rohingya crew who talked me through the escape from the hotel in Kendari, wound up in the US where he became a car mechanic. In his career choice, he carried on a proud family tradition. His family was full of mechanics, down through generations, which is why I will always associate him with the military jeep that I used to see parked next to my grandparents’ house.
There have been dozens of guys like Zakaria, who journeyed through the fire and somehow made it to the other side. I have been delighted to reconnect with each of them from the safety of my new homeland. Like me, they are happy and grateful to be free and pursue their own paths. Their achievements, large and small, pay tribute to the amazing resilience of the human spirit, once the weight of oppression has been lifted.
However, not all have done so well, post-detention. One of my Manus bunkmates who was resettled in the US continues to experience severe trauma, to the point where he is unable to carry on with daily life. Another bunkmate from MA2-09, Haroon, the older man who was with me during the attack that claimed the life of Reza Barati, was also resettled in the US. A year after he arrived, he died alone in his apartment of no known cause.
And everyone I continue to talk to seems to suffer the same mysterious stomach pains that I had once believed to be my own unique memento from the tropical island prison.
This is what living in a cage does to a person. No matter your powers of resilience, detainment changes your sense of the world – and yourself – forever. When the forces of society, the media, political and legal systems come together in a conspiracy to rob you of your freedom and define you as less than human, it is not easy to resist. You start believing their lies.
For the most part, those who have been released are the lucky ones. There are still hundreds of people caught in the web of the ‘Pacific Solution’. They are stuck perpetually indoors in the ‘hotels’ in Australia, or still reside offshore, shifted from one facility to another by authorities who believe, against years of evidence to the contrary, that they will one day lose their resolve and agree to return to their countries of origin. Over the years, Australia has sent a total of 3,127 people to Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Despite the fact that 86.7 per cent of this population has been recognised as refugees, almost half of them (1500 individuals) continue to languish in limbo.
Further from the colonial core, there are many more thousands of refugees stuck in Indonesia’s detention and refugee centres, caught in ‘green hell’, as they often call it. A decade after arriving, they are still there, legally unable to work, open a bank account, go to school or get married. They spend their days learning English and trying to reach out to someone – anyone – who might care, as their youthful promise fades, along with their hopes of resettlement. All the while, Australia, of course, continues to pull the strings and pay the bills.
The fact that this system has existed for so long, and continues to exist, demonstrates that the humanitarian disaster on Manus Island was far from a one-off mistake. It wasn’t a policy blip nor a rogue political misadventure that the government can now downplay, blame on someone else or pretend never happened. The illegal imprisonment we endured for years was part of a large-scale and well-planned abuse of human rights and human lives that has deep and tangled roots in the Land Down Under.
Offshore processing and the violence it involved was overseen by no fewer than six prime ministers since the ‘Pacific Solution’ was first announced by the government of John Howard back in 2001, with strong bipartisan support. In the fast-spinning rolodex of Australian leaders, three of them – Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, and Malcolm Turnbull – each managed to sit in the big chair during the four years I spent detained, with no detectable change to the brutal policies that kept us caged.
You might think public opinion would have shifted once the facts of our suffering managed to squeak through the Murdoch media wall. Any reasonable scenario would suggest that eventually, the state-sanctioned detainment and torture of men, women, and children might turn from a political winner to electoral poison. Not so! For decades, Australian voters have rewarded political candidates for possessing a coldness of heart. The way they deny the truth is so precise it seems provocative, a form of Double Speak. The phrase ‘saving lives at sea’ was first used in Operation Sovereign Borders – and then became a rhetorical weapon of the entire ruling Liberal regime – to justify, of all things, losing lives at sea. A border protection policy that is considered a horror by many legal scholars and refugee advocates around the world, and a national shame even by some Australians, was proclaimed by Malcolm Turnbull to be ‘the best in the world.’
Against this rhetorical backdrop it was no surprise when, in 2018, Scott Morrison assumed the prime ministership. This was the faux-pious immigration minister who helped design and lead Operation Sovereign Borders, driving it forward with the zeal of a tank commander. Now in the general’s seat, he led the Liberal-National Coalition to a memorable victory at the polls the following year. Believing he had been called by a higher power ‘to do God’s work’, Morrison described his unexpected election as a ‘miracle.’
Many believe Morrison’s career benefited from a power of a darker sort. His government and its policies certainly received a warm reception from the Murdoch media conglomerate and the other right-wing news properties of the nation. And he repaid their kindness by serving more red meat to the beast. True to his shameless character, Morrison made a point of placing a shiny steel trophy on a display table for all to see. Cast in the unmistakable shape of an Asian fishing boat rolling on waves, the strange-looking totem is emblazoned with bold black letters reading ‘I Stopped These’.
For all I know, the trophy is still there, since at the time of writing, Morrison still sits in the prime minister’s chair. I wonder if he ever walks past his prized possession and gives a moment’s thought to the terrible damage done by his pet policy. There’s no way of knowing just how many people died as a direct result of Operation Sovereign Borders, but the numbers would not be insignificant.
There are many unknowns. We can never be sure how many detainees were murdered or killed themselves after being deported or forced to repatriate to lethal homelands. We can’t put a figure on the souls lost in the UNHCR’s sprawling system of suspended animation, where lives drift into emptiness and suicide is a popular option. We’ll never find out how many people have drowned since Scott Morrison asserted control over the waters beyond Australia’s ‘sovereign borders’ and strongarmed them into refusing refugees. And that is to say nothing of the thousands of survivors who will carry sickness, trauma, and scars – both in mind and body – for the rest of their lives.
My own survivor guilt came in waves, even as I tried to leave the past behind. The awareness that others were continuing to suffer left a stain on my enjoyment. The situation back in Burma was impossible to avoid (and remains so today). I knew from my volunteer work as a researcher and an advocate for the Rohingya, and more intimately, from my phone calls to my parents back home, things were just getting worse.
In 2021, the country endured another coup d’état, triggering unrest that quickly dragged the entire country into a state of civil war. The trouble came from the usual source: the Burmese military, which deposed the country’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and then put her back under arrest.
The resulting uproar across Burma was dealt with by the usual heavy hand of the military, only this time, it was not just the Rohingya and other minorities who were subjected to violent persecution, but the entire civilian population. Thousands have been detained and hundreds killed. The economic impact of the crackdown has been compounded by the effects of COVID-19, which have joined forces to cause the country’s health and education system to collapse. It’s a catastrophe nowhere close to finding resolution, with the darkest days still to come.
One insight that I had glimpsed on Manus was reaffirmed by my tenure as a student at the University of Toronto: that documenting a crisis, making careful note of its causes and implications, can actually alter its course. Many policy decisions, including the successful effort at the United Nations to declare the genocide against the Rohingyans in Burma just that – a genocide – started in obscure research think tanks, which added documentation and legitimacy to the basic truths being lived by those suffering under tyranny.
The genocide motion at the UN was first launched by Canada, and I am pleased to note how the country’s support of multiculturalism has translated well into bringing light to refugee crises the world over. On a similar note (though on a much smaller scale), in 2020, I was proud to accept an invitation to join the Refugee Advocacy Network (RAN), which officially launched on World Refugee Day. Itself an offshoot of a ‘policy dialogue’ at Carleton University in Ottawa, RAN has been endorsed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and is the first refugee-led advocacy group to officially advise a national government. It’s a model that has attracted the notice of other countries, with New Zealand and Germany launching their own versions in 2021.
As I learned all too well on Manus, government policy is not just something that should be left to the politicians and ignored by everyone else. Policy changes lives, in profound and sometimes devastating ways. At the Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative, and other projects, like Northern Lights Canada, I have done my best to combine my energy with that of other volunteers to bring a little more fairness and hope to this often cruel and callous world.
It is in the same spirit that I agreed to write the book you are reading now. When first approached by the publisher, who had seen news stories of my journey from Manus to Canada, my reaction was, ‘Please no. I can’t return to those days.’ Talking to journalists after years of deliberately flying under the radar was hard enough. Now I was being asked to dig deep into the details of those years and share the most intimate and painful experiences with a reading public that mostly consisted of complete strangers.
It seemed impossible, and unwise, given how much tough emotional work I had to put into leaving that past behind. And yet, like my friend Amir before me, I felt like I owed it to the guys who were still being held in detention, who might never have a chance to share their own accounts of what we had been through together.
So, with some very considerate and helpful friends acting as listeners, I began to open up about those days, and the tale began to take shape. And as the narrative unfolded, it brought with it the memories of those old horrors. At night, I was convulsed by nightmares. I would wake up in terror, thinking I was back in solitary, with no way out.
My book has an ending, but the story does not. In Australia, at least, nothing much has changed, despite all the madness and suffering. While ‘Manus Prison’ is gone, the offshore detainment system continues. Together, the terrible forces of government, ideology and media march in lockstep to trample the lives of the world’s most vulnerable (and often most talented and resourceful) people. My wish is that this book, while keeping the reader interested, will draw some attention to this evil system, with the hope of one day bringing an end to it. My own journey to freedom was made possible by quiet individuals who took a chance on me because they believed that doing so – helping even just a single person get to a better place – was worthwhile in itself. My ability to write this book is a testament to their courage, and to the small actions that came together to point my way to freedom and save my life. A single person can make a difference through the smallest act of goodness, because small actions can come together to make great ones.
This is my hope, at least. Whether it’s Burma or Manus, or some other totalitarian regime, the past does repeat itself, and the same narratives of oppression occur in different times and places. At least if the facts are properly recorded, there’s a chance that someone will stumble across them at some future moment in history and say, ‘Not this time. Not again.’