Writer Richard Cooke notes in a recent New York Times opinion piece that Australia honored author Behrouz Boochani with the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s most valuable literary prize.
But Boochani “was unable to collect his stipend in person. The same nation praising him is also keeping him in indefinite detention on a small island in the Pacific,” writes Cooke.
For the past five years, “along with 700 or so other inmates, he has lived on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. His is a prison sentence without an end date: Australia refuses to accept asylees attempting arrival via boat, even if they attain refugee status, and Iran rejects forcible repatriation of these individuals,” Cooke notes.
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 