#57. I Am But More Than A Refugee - Behrouz Boochani and Abdul Samad Haidari

Behrouz Boochani and Abdul Samad Haidari speak about their journeys as refugees, the systems which demonize asylum seekers as criminals, Manus Prison Theory and structural oppression, and the role of art, literature and storytelling in resistance an healing.

Guest Profiles:

Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer, film producer and research fellow at Canterbury University. He, along with Omid Tofighian, developed the Manus Prison Theory which is a framework to understand offshore detention facilities and how this system functions as a form of systemic violence and oppression against asylum seekers. Behrouz himself was detained at Manus Island for two years after its official closure in 2019 and his memoir, No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction in January 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/31/writing-from-manus-prison-a-scathing-critique-of-domination-and-oppression

Abdul Samad Haidari is journalist, poet and refugee advocate. From the Hazara community in Afghanistan, he was forced to flee Afghanistan on multiple occasions having spent his childhood as a refugee in Pakistan and Iran before returning. His journalism had a particular focus on women and children's rights, terrorist group actions, transparency and accountability in government, and the systematic persecution of minority groups in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He spent 9 years in a refugee camp in Indonesia before making in to New Zealand. The podcast title "I am but more than a refugee" is an homage to one of the poems in his recent book. "The Unsent Condolences"

https://abdulsamadhaidari.wixsite.com/site/books

Chapters

• 0:00 Behrouz and Abdul's Journeys
• 14:39 The Challenges of Resettlement and the Unique Perspective of Refugees
• 41:19 Manus Prison Theory
• 51:22 The Role of Art and Media in Refugee Voices
• 1:05:17 Final Thoughts