Inside Russian penal colonies: What conditions Brittney Griner could be facing
Brittney Griner, a U.S. basketball star, is serving her sentence at the IK-2 penal colony in Mordovia, about 350 miles southeast of Moscow.
UP NEXT
NOW PLAYING: News
Inside Russian penal colonies: What conditions Brittney Griner could be facing
USA TODAYUP NEXT
-
Sky Lanterns Light Up the Night in Northern Taiwan - TaiwanPlus News
TaiwanPlus
-
Tough As Nails - Southwest Carpenters
CBS Entertainment
-
UC Davis team studies Giraffe mating behaviors
CBS Sacramento -
CF7FEA6D-BBDE-4905-97C1-708607BD67DD.mp4
ninja tiger
-
CF7FEA6D-BBDE-4905-97C1-708607BD67DD.mp4
-
Ohio derailment raises railroad safety questions
The Associated Press -
Construction boom underway in Bellevue business district
NBC 26 WGBA Green Bay, WI
-
Ballots behind bars? California weighs reinstating prisoners' voting rights
CBS Sacramento -
Opening night for the Birds Nest concert series
Dailymotion
-
Giant housecat has already grown to the size of a 9-year-old human
Metro
-
Rijksmuseum to host the world's largest exhibition on Dutch master painter Johannes Vermeer
-
BamaCentral Courtside: No. 3 Alabama 97, Florida 69
Bama Central on FanNation -
Snake Slithers Underneath Sitting Woman During Her Work Break
Storyful
-
Christina Aguilera to be honoured at GLAAD Media Awards
-
Christina Aguilera to be honoured at GLAAD Media Awards
Bang Showbiz
![For more than four-and-a-half years, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani has been in limbo on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG).
He was sent there by Australia in 2013, after he tried to reach its shores by boat.
As a journalist in Iran, Boochani published stories that promoted the Kurdish language and culture. He co-founded a Kurdish magazine, but after its offices were raided and several of his colleagues were arrested and accused of undermining the Iranian state, Boochani fled, fearing for his safety.
"I fell into trouble with the government ... I hid myself for more than a month in Tehran in a friend's house," says Boochani. "After that I received some information that they [were] going to arrest me too and they [had] some plan ... I decided to leave Iran."
He travelled through south-east Asia and then by boat from Indonesia to the Australian territory of Christmas Island.
But while his boat was at sea, the Australian government announced a new radical immigration policy - denying settlement to all asylum seekers arriving "illegally" by boat.
Soon after his arrival on Christmas Island, Boochani was deported to Australia's new offshore 'processing centre' on Manus Island. It was part of a deal in which PNG - in exchange for billions of dollars - would accommodate asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia until their claims to be refugees were decided.
"When we arrived they put us in a temporary place and they didn't allow us to call our family....I thought I arrived in Australia as a free country, [but] after 20 days, they said 'we are going to exile you to Manus Island and you must live there forever or you go back to your country'," recalls Boochani.
Australia's detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru have been criticised for its poor conditions by human rights groups including Amnesty International, who recently published a report criticising Australia's immigration policy as one of 'cruelty and neglect'.
"For us, it's a prison, [it's] even worse than a prison," he says, describing his experience as "systematic torture". "Six people already died under this policy in this prison camp.... Their policy was to create hate... They were happy for people in Manus prison to hate Australia, to forget Australia."
Following a ruling by the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea in October 2017, the camp was closed. Medical and support staff left, power and water supplies were disconnected. But most refugees refused to leave.
For three weeks, they lived in the former prison, surviving on rainwater and food smuggled in by locals.
"It was like a war zone," says Boochani. "But in some ways we were happy because we were out of the systematic torture. The officers were not there... We were controlling our lives."
The following month, those remaining were forcibly evicted by police. Some were hit with sticks and dragged onto buses to be relocated elsewhere on the island.
Ever since he was sent to Manus, and especially during the siege and the eviction, Boochani has used his journalism to draw attention to the conditions refugees and migrants face on Manus Island, where media access is tightly controlled.
He has written for international and Australian media, and, in 2017, shot a film on his mobile phone, which showed the reality of daily life in the detention centre.
"I don't think of myself as a journalist or a refugee," he says. "I feel that I am a human, I am fighting for humanity, for [refugees]. I know their suffering, I know them ... I know their stories, so it is important to me.
"It is my duty as a journalist, it is my mission ... to work on this issue and to tell people. Also the important this is that I am working to record this policy and history of this prison camp for the next generation."
More from Talk To Al Jazeera on:
YouTube - http://aje.io/ttajYT
Facebook - http://facebook.com/talktoaj
Twitter - http://twitter.com/talktoaljazeera
Website - http://www.aljazeera.com/talktojazeera/
- Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe
- Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish
- Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera
- Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/](http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA17gN7r.img?h=170&w=300&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&f=jpg "Behrouz Boochani: Living in limbo on Manus Island | Talk to Al Jazeera in the Field - Al Jazeera English")
