Behrouz Boochani (Persian: بهروز بوچانی; born 23 July 1983) is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer living in New Zealand.
Boochani is the co-director, along with Iranian film maker Arash Kamali Sarvestani, of the documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, has published numerous articles in leading media internationally about the plight of refugees held by the Australian government on Manus Island, and has won several awards.
The book was tapped out on a mobile phone in a series of single messages over time and translated from Persian into English by Omid Tofighian.
[7] He co-founded and produced the Kurdish magazine Werya (also spelt Varia), which he regarded as his most important work,[4] and which attracted the attention of the Iranian authorities because of its political and social content.
He gathered information about human rights abuses within the camp and sent them via a secret mobile phone to news organisations and advocacy groups such as The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, the Refugee Action Collective, and the United Nations.
In September 2015, PEN International (the Melbourne and Norwegian branches of which Boochani is now an honorary member[11]) and a coalition of human rights groups launched an international campaign on Boochani's behalf, urging the Australian government to abide by its obligations to the principle of non-refoulement, as defined by Article 33 of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
He was also jailed during the 2015 hunger strike that was put down by force; he spent eight days inside Lorengau prison and was then released without charge after being asked to stop reporting.
[13] Although forcibly moved to accommodation outside the detention centre some weeks after it was officially closed on 31 October 2017, Boochani could not leave the island without travel documents.
[9] He has also published poems online[40][41] and narrates his story in the award-winning animated short documentary film Nowhere Lines: Voices of Manus Island, made by UK film-maker Lucas Schrank in 2015).
Written in prose and poetry, it chronicles his boat journey from Indonesia, his detainment on Manus Island and the lives (and deaths) of other prisoners, as well as observations on the Australian guards and the local Papuan people.
[52] Louis Klee wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "In a decade of Australian politics defined by the leadership spill—a spilt decade, in which any meaningful progress on the issues that define Australia, be it Indigenous affairs, refugee politics, or climate change, effectively stalled—Boochani's witnessing has elevated him to a paradoxical position.
[55] In an interview with the writer Arnold Zable following the award, Boochani said that he has many conflicting thoughts on it, but he sees it as a "political statement from the literary and creative arts community in Australia, and all those who do not agree with the government's thinking".
[25] Boochani said the new film should incorporate some of his previous work, and that of his fellow asylum seekers, as a record of part of Australian history.
[60] Boochani collaborated with Iranian-born Melbourne photographer Hoda Afshar on a two-channel video work, Remain, which includes spoken poetry by him and Iranian poet Bijan Elahi.
[64] Boochani is one of the subjects of, as well as chief collaborator on,[56] the play Manus written by Leila Hekmatnia and Keyvan Sarreshteh, Directed by Nazanin Sahamizadeh in 2017,[65][66] which tells the story of eight Iranians who fled Iran for Australia.
It relates the stories of their lives in Iran and their experiences in detention on Manus, including details of the riot in February 2014, which led to the murder of one of them, Reza Barati, by locals.
It was performed in Tehran in February–March 2017, running for a month in the Qashqai Hall of the City Theatre Complex and attended by nearly 3000 people,[67] including Abbas Araghchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, and Australian diplomats.
The director Sahamizadeh said it was performed there as a part of its international tour to express compassion and solidarity with Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who had sought protection in Bangladesh recently.
[70][56] In March 2023 a production of Euripides' play Women of Troy, directed by Ben Winspear and starring his wife actor-producer Marta Dusseldorp was staged at the 10 Days on the Island festival in Tasmania.
Poetry Boochani was set to music composed by Katie Noonan and performed by a chorus of Tasmanian women and girls, interspersed with the text of the play.