Hamid Reza Shakib is disillusioned and angry. He has been detained, starved and attacked – but his disappointment at learning Australia is not the country he thought it was cuts deepest.
“I witnessed a lie, I witnessed cruelty, I witnessed filth,” he says through an interpreter.
He claims Australia used him and other refugees to protect its borders. He demands an apology, as well as appreciation for protecting Australia’s borders better than Australian Border Force ever could.
The 48-year-old fled the repressive regime of Iran to seek sanctuary in Australia – a place, like other western countries, he had heard observed and respected human rights.
Instead he says all his hopes were destroyed and that he found himself in a “green hell”.
On Manus Island, Shakib helped organise demonstrations, including the peaceful February 2014 protest that spiralled out of control when the camp’s fences were battered down and refugees were attacked by guards and locals. A fellow Iranian, Reza Berati, was killed. Another man lost his eye and another was shot in the buttocks.
Despite that trauma, the protests were his happiest times in Papua New Guinea: “The most beautiful memories ... were those days that we were protesting and fighting for our freedom and we didn’t surrender to their system.”
Shakib could not go home but he refused to apply for refugee status in PNG because that would be submitting to the policy he was protesting against.
“I had fire in front of me and fire behind me,” he says. “I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t go forward.”
Eventually medical reasons took him from Manus Island to Port Moresby.
Then in late 2019 he was waiting to go to Australia for surgery when two officers burst into his motel room. They took him to the new, Australia-funded Bomana immigration centre in a quasi-motorcade, police cars ahead and behind with sirens. At the entrance a row of guards stood holding chained attack dogs.
More than 50 other men were also taken to Bomana, all considered failed asylum seekers with no right to stay in PNG even if, like Shakib, they had not even applied for refugee status.
He says Bomana was worse than anything he’d experienced. The showers were boiling hot. There was not enough food – just scraps of a meal three times a day, not even enough for a child.
“Apart from that, you couldn’t find anything but water and also psychiatric pills,” he says. “There were no phones, no pens, nothing.”
Three months in, he’d had enough. Wagering that the PNG government would not return him to Iran, he signed a form agreeing to repatriation. He was released. Other Iranians followed suit.
Once he was released, Hamid heard his medevac application had been approved but he declined to go. He did not want to set foot on Australian soil.
Soon after, the UN approached him and said it would receive his case. Just one week later, more than six years into his asylum journey, he was accepted as a refugee.
It was the first time he felt safe.
In January this year Shakib arrived in France. There he has a permanent visa, a house in a small town south of Lyon, and an allowance until he finds work. Medical care is free, and when Covid travel restrictions are lifted and his family can join him, his two daughters will go to school for free. He plans to find a job driving trucks when his French improves.
Although he finally has freedom, it would be wrong to describe him as happy. He did not see a psychologist when he was in Manus, believing it would have upset others who looked up to him as a strong leader.
“Because I was not treated, now in France I can see the consequences because it stays with me,” he says.
He dwells on the others who were sent to Manus and Nauru. He argues their resistance brought down the system of offshore detention and that they should all be given badges of honour for sacrificing their health and years of their lives to protect Australia’s borders.
Shakib believes he was deceived about the west’s commitment to human rights.
“I came to Australia because I was looking for freedom and democracy,” he says. “But the only way that I can describe democracy in Australia is like a dried tree, like a tree without life, with its roots in blood.
“There is no life in the tree and it’s fed by the blood of Hamid Khazaei, the blood of Reza Berati, the blood of those people who lost their lives in offshore detention. This filthy tree is nourished from blood.”
Interpreter: Moones Mansoubi
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
