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Asylum Seeker Narratives

(Status : Public)
Coordinated by AustLit UQ Team
  • Acting from the Heart

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    Personal accounts from over fifty Australians who became involved with the lives of refugees held in Australian detention centres.

    'In recent years, thousands of Australians from all walks of life have been moved to act in support of asylum seekers and refugees and against the Australian government's immigration policy and practice. In 'Acting from the Heart', over 50 people who reflect the diversity of this movement describe how and why they became involved. The contributors shared a sense of disbelief and outrage that 'Australian values' suddenly appeared to include callous self-interest and a disregard for human suffering.

    (...more)
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  • Another Country

    Editor's note: Writer Rosie Scott outlines the process and the meaning of publishing an anthology of detainees' writing [Another Country].

    Scott's piece also includes comment on Tony Zandavar, one of the contributors to Another Country, who was released from detention in 2004.

    (...more)
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  • Asylum: Voices from behind the Razor Wire

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    Heather Tyler's chapters incorporate letters, diary entries, and interview material from asylum seekers being held in mandatory detention in Australia; the majority of whom were held at the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney. (...more)
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  • Beyond the Razor Wire ... Is Australia, Where Everything's Free

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    Sandy Thorne has written about her experiences working as a detentions officer at Woomera and Curtin (near Derby, W.A.). She describes the conditions the detainees lived under, the facilities and handouts they enjoyed, the constant violence that warranted a large security presence. Riots, lip-sewing, attempted suicides, assaults, extreme clashes of culture, were a constant aspect of detention centre life.Many incidents in this book will shock many Australians, particularly the reaction of some detainees to the September 11 events.

    From author's website.

    Find library holdings here.

  • The Bitter Shore

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    Biography of an Iranian family fleeing religious and political persecution who were detained in the Woomera Detention Centre.

    'Is the life of a child worth the price of freedom? To escape religious persecution in Iran, Zahra and Saeed Badraie made the heart-breaking decision to leave their home behind and find a better life for their family elsewhere. The agent they approached to help them flee told the Badraies that there was only one place the people smugglers could take them: Australia, a far away country, but a generous one that would give them refuge.

    (...more)
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  • Boat People: Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus

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    'The book includes extracts from diaries, letters, and other testimony of former UNHCR officers located in Canada, Indonesia, the US and Australia. Among them is 84-year-old Talbot Bashall, who served as Controller of the Refugee Control Centre in Hong Kong. After so many years, these privileged perspectives on the exodus can finally be shared.

    'Carina Hoang has also assembled a powerful collection of photographic images, most of which are published for the first time. They are vital to the book's first objective, which is to preserve the historical record for the education of future generations of the global boat-people diaspora.

    (...more)
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  • Cola's Journey

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    'Cola Bilkuei was born in southern Sudan into a tribal family, living in huts made of reed and cow dung. His was a dirt poor childhood, spent guarding the familys cattle against predators and neighbouring tribes, but a happy one. It wasn't to last long however. In 1987, Cola, then aged about 10 years old, was forcibly recruited into Sudan Peoples Liberation Army. For two months, he and hundreds of other young children from his tribe were marched from southern Sudan to a military training camp inside Ethiopia. (...more)
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  • Compassionate Bastard: How an Ordinary Bloke Came to Manage Villawood Detention Centre and Still Live with Himself

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    'Politicians outdo each other with tough measures to deal with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. But someone has to look people in the eye and do the questioning, the arresting, the detaining and the deporting. For a time, that someone was Peter Mitchell.

    'Hoping for a quiet public-service job, Mitchell walked into the Department of Immigration in 1990 and quickly found himself on the frontline of one of the nation's most divisive issues.

    'With the wry humour shared by those in uniform, Mitchell describes his early years collaring illegal workers and visa overstayers.

    (...more)
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  • The Happiest Refugee

    Courtesy of Allen & Unwin.

    'Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing - not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for days - could quench their desire to make a better life in the country they had dreamed about.

    'Life in Australia was hard, an endless succession of back-breaking work, crowded rooms, ruthless landlords and make-do everything.

    (...more)
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  • From Immigration Officer to Advocate

    Diana Goldrick writes of the experiences, both during her work with the Immigration Department and from her childhood, which influenced her to resign from a public service career and become an advocate for refugees. (...more)
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  • Leila's Story

    A personal account, told pseudonymously.

    (...more)
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  • Life Lessons: What Refugees and Asylum Seekers Have Taught Me

    Published in the anthology Acting from the Heart.

  • Lives in Limbo: Voices of Refugees under Temporary Protection

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    'In this book, 35 refugees, all temporary protection visa (TPV) holders and mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, talk directly about their quest for asylum in Australia. They provide poignant details of persecution in their home country, their journey to Australia, prolonged periods of mandatory detention, and life under Australia's controversial temporary protection regime.'

    Source: Publisher's blurb.

    (...more)
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  • Looking for the Future

    Author's note: In 1991, fleeing the first Gulf War, Batool Albatat's family joined many other Iraqis fleeing their homeland, becoming refugees in Iran. Written when she was fifteen and at school in Melbourne, this is the story of how she travelled from Iran to Australia in 2001.

    (...more)
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  • Mahboba's Promise: How One Woman Made a World of Difference

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    An Afghani refugee who found a new life in Australia only to lose her beloved son in a tragic accident. Mahboba Rawi now inspires others to stand up and be counted when the world needs it most. Today she is the driving force behind Mahboba's promise a groundbreaking international aid organisation. -- Libraries Australia (...more)
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  • Once a Prisoner ... Queue-Jumper

    Published in Southerly.

  • Osmani, Gyzele (1970-) Refugee Advocate, Student, and Former Refugee / Detainee

    Gyzele Osmani fled Kosovo in 1999 with her husband and five small children. Accepting temporary refuge in Australia she was housed in the Bandiana Safe Haven where her youngest daughter received medical treatment for a dislocated hip. Refusing repatriation in March 2000 because the situation in the Presevo Valley was unsafe and her daughter needed further medical treatment, the family was interned for seven months in the Port Hedland Detention Centre before being released to settle in Canberra. Now an Australian citizen, Gyzele is studying Business Administration and her story is the subject of a prize-winning essay and radio program.

    Find library holdings here.

  • Refugee to Resident

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    An educated girl from a prosperous family in Iraq finds her world turned upside down by circumstances arising from the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

    Find library holdings here.

  • Reality Bites

    The contributions to this anthology arose from a series of workshops which were held over six months in 1996 and based at the Asylum Seekers Centre at Surry Hills, NSW. Frank Elvey, in the 'Foreword' writes: 'Brought together now in this publication these writings will help all who read them become more aware of the humanity and special needs of asylum seekers. The publication of these writings at a time when the Australian Government is pondering budget cuts and policies that will impact heavily on refugee claimants is particularly appropriate, because it keeps before our eyes the individual human lives that lie behind the stereotypes and statistics' (6). (...more)
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  • The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif

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    ' The Rug-Maker of Mazar-e-Sharif is a memoir of Najaf Mazari, an Afghani refugee who travelled to Australia, was detained in Woomera detention centre, went through various trials to gain permanent residency in Australia and eventually opened a rug shop in Prahran, Melbourne, which he still operates today.' (Libraries Australia) (...more)
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  • Salima's Story

    From the young writers' essay anthology No Place Like Home.

  • The Story of the Bridge for Asylum Seekers Foundation

    From the anthology Acting from the Heart.

  • Tales from a Suitcase

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    'I am homeless, I am without a country, without a place, without a family. I'm nothing.'

    Since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, millions of Afghan people have died and millions have fled. The Taliban promised hope, but brought violent oppression and a regime of discipline that saw more people escaping to save their lives. A tiny proportion of these people have found themselves in Australia and these are some of their stories.

    (...more)
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  • There Is a Light at the End of the Tunnel

    Salima Haidary writes of leaving Afghanistan with siblings and her mother, following the disappearance of her father. After a period of detention in Port Hedland, and resettlement in Canberra, they are reunited with her father, after five years of not knowing his whereabouts or whether he was still alive. (...more)
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  • Violin Lessons

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    'From the songs of Arab diva Umm Khultum on the banks of the Tigris to the strains of a young boy playing the violin for his mother in Melbourne, to the swing jazz of the nightclubs and cabarets of 1940s Baghdad, a fisherman playing a flute on the banks of the Mekong, and Paganini in the borderlands of eastern Poland...

    'Music weaves its way through each of these spellbinding stories. Each tale, each fragment of music, leads to Amal, the woman who saved her life by clinging to a corpse for twenty hours alone in the sea.
    (...more)
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