Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains: A Call for Dignity and Justice

Abstract

Since 2001 Australia's offshore processing regime has turned asylum seekers into one of the country's main destitute groups. No asylum seeker trying to reach Australia by boat is allowed to settle in the country. If their boat is intercepted by the Australian Navy in Australian waters, they are forced to turn back, or are forcefully transferred and indefinitely held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea until their refuge applications are processed. This article focuses on the testimony of one of these asylum seekers who was held in one of the detention centres on Manus Island: Behrouz Boochani's memoir No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018). It explores the author's condemnation of the oppressive kyriarchal system on which the Australian detention regime is founded, and his embracement of the environment as a form of resistance against it. Contrary to the pejorative stereotyped images often used by governments and some mainstream media to justify their anti-immigration policies, Boochani's first-person account reminds us that asylum seekers and refugees are not disposable objects, but active agents who should be treated in a more humane and ethical way all around the world.