https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6701-857X
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Ashwiny O Kistnareddy, Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrooz Boochani, Behrooz Boochani (Translated) and Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoobi, Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2, June 2024, Pages 602–604, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feae007
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Extract
The year 2019 saw the publication of Kurdish Iranian writer and activist Boochani’s (2019) No Friend but the Mountains, a collection of his writings during his detention on Manus Island. Written through a number of text messages sent from a smartphone smuggled into prison to his friend and translator, Omid Tofighian, with the help of another friend, Moones Mansoobi, No Friend but the Mountains garnered much success as it documented the events, living conditions and quotidian realities of carceral life, in particular indefinite detention. Boochani had arrived as a refugee on one of the boats that head for Australian shores. A journalist by trade, Boochani fled Iran because his advocacy and activism on behalf of the Kurdish people put him in danger of persecution by the state. Boochani saved cigarettes to exchange them for the smartphone that would enable him to present his testimonial account, reflections, and activist writings to a worldwide audience through his friend. In Freedom, Only Freedom, Boochani continues the work that he began in his first book, this time supported by a range of other voices, comprising journalists, academics, and refugees discussing the intersections of detention, white settler colonialism, and human rights. Manus Island detention centre was closed down in 2017. By then Boochani had written several newspaper articles in widely read publications such as The Guardian. Following the success of No Friend but the Mountain, Boochani received an invitation to New Zealand in 2019, and shortly afterwards, was granted ‘permanent protection’ as Tofighian writes in his preface to Boochani’s Freedom, Only Freedom (xvii). Freed from captivity after six long years, Boochani has since openly advocated against the detention and offshoring of those seeking refuge. The structure of Freedom, Only Freedom as a collection of essays penned by academics, writers, and journalists, alongside Boochani’s own represents the most significant moments and events of Boochani’s life in Manus Island prison and his subsequent escape. The book is divided into ten parts, spanning chronologically from 2013 to 2020, with Boochani’s essays providing the linchpin and the other contributors tackling issues that are related to his main themes in each part.
