Freedom Is Beautiful (2023)

[bunniefuu]

I'm gonna tell you some story.

When I was on Manus Island, the people

call me 'Lion' Farhad.

And I don't know why they call me

maybe I was tough and really strong.

from Jakarta to Christmas Island

We were like 65 people

with families, some kids.

Everyone is sleeping, someone vomiting

in the edge of the

fisher boat.

Big wave came

half of my body was under the ocean.

I could see there is a rope.

And I hold it.

I grabbed it and no one knew.

I survived from that time

and I came back, said wow

So I will be alive.

There was something inside

and I believe that one day I will be free.

I didn't know they're gonna exile us

to Manus and Nauru for six years.

I was there for six years.

And then they transferred me

to Australia for medical help.

Still I am suffering from the pain and what happened to me

but I am a still strong, I am still the lion.

My life was the size of a room

for years and years.

I think it was a miracle

that I survived.

All those years that I was in detention

was like a nightmare.

t*rture after t*rture.

I didn't want to get angry.

I wanted to be kind to myself.

I decided to keep my smile.

And I wanted to be a person

for people who don't have voice.

I learned to be patient.

I learned to become friends with music,

with painting.

When I got my freedom

I felt I have a new sense.

I felt that I have a pair of wings

and I'm gonna fly.

We will decide

who comes to this country and the circumstances

in which they come.

After rescuing more than 400 muslim asylum seekers,

no one could have predicted the

dramatic sea change ahead.

From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in

Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in

Australia as refugees.

The boats, the boats

will be stopped.

You have been brought to this place here because you

have sought to illegally enter Australia, by boat.

Persons transferred to regional processing centers

will not be settled in this country and the

position of this government will not change.

Are you saying that unaccompanied minors would be better off

in detention?

The Australian government forbids journalists

from filming or interviewing detainees at its camps.

This policy has been incredibly dehumanising.

It's like this is a horrible human

experiment that has no end.

The Guardian newspaper has been leaked more than 2,000

incident reports from Australia's Nauru detention camp.

The sexual as*ault of young children, the physical as*ault

of young children, the deleterious impact

of detention on children,

su1c1de attempts by children, self-harm attempts

and we've seen that continue.

We have been denied

our basic needs, water and food and electricity.

That does not mean that we are going to surrender.

We have been in this place for four and a half years

and we have not committed in any crime.

We are asking the international community

to rescue us from this disaster.

We have been struggling with

starvation.

I would like to say

and send this clear message to the government.

We only want freedom in

a safe country and it is a clear message.

What do we want?!

Freedom!

Nobody should ever doubt the resolve of

this government to keep our borders secure.

They won't be

you know, numerate or literate

in their own language, let alone English.

Until now there has been a long lengthy delay,

there has been almost obsessive legal intervention

to try and stop people who are ill from

being transferred over to Australia

for the care that they need.

This is going to be able

to get spivs and rapists

and murderers onto our shores.

The bill says serious crimes

would preclude that, that's wrong what you said,

you admit that?

What Labor says and what Labor...

What the bill says. I'm sorry, you've got to be factual

when you make the case.

I will do everything in my power to

ensure that these suggested changes that

would undermine our border protection laws never see

the light of day.

You're suggesting that they're almost, all of them are ill.

The bottom line is Barry, we're not prepared to weaken

border protection like Labor is

That's not the point, can you explain to me

how it is, that it's got to the point where almost all of

them are ill?

The point is Barry, we've stopped the boats.

Because of temporary protection visas

That's not an answer to that question

because of... offshore...

because of boat turn backs...

Hello Craig, I'm walking in the corridor

in the Park prison.

It's a very proud moment of my life

today, I'm gonna share with you.

I'm gonna be free very soon

I'm very excited and I just

wanted to tell you that, thank you very much for

all your amazing support

and thanks, all of you people.

I cannot believe it

I cannot.. yeah

this morning I call you, I'm going to be free.

Finally.

My name is Farhad Bandesh

I'm a Kurdish refugee.

Seven and half years of my life

I lost it for no reason.

Fortunately with lots of

support from Australian people,

I got my freedom on my birthday.

My name is Mostafa Azimitabar.

I am 34 years old. I am a Kurdish refugee

I was imprisoned,

more than 2,700 days by the Australian government.

This is the second week in my life that

I feel freedom.

I haven't had freedom before in my life.

So happy to see you out and free

and with trees and grass and everything

and Farhad as well,

you look so well.

So that was the last song that you released.

What was the name of it?

How amazing...

I remember the first time I saw Moz was in

Foxtrot, but

we didn't know each other and I didn't

try to connect it to him. But

when I saw him playing guitar

and

thought wow, this guy is a musician.

We become friends in Oscar compound.

Yeah, I remember the first time when I met Farhad,

and he was drawing something and I really

liked his painting

and I started talking.

And we became friends.

I grew up in w*r.

Even the first day when I was born

the hail of bombs bombarded my city.

It was the melody of my childhood.

When I was child, we had really

bad time because

that time I was born in w*r

I grow up with the bombs, the sounds of the

screaming of the people.

We just run from the w*r.

We went to the mountains, we went to the forest.

We were in tents,

like thousand people

they left from the city to get safety.

We spend lots of time without water, without bread or food,

and I remember

when the wind trembled the

tree, oak tree, the sounds of dry oak

from last year, that was kind of music.

I saw the government

are using a crane for hanging

up people.

They were not moving

and I thought that they are dolls,

and I asked

the people who were around me and they said

that they are human beings and I said,

but they are not moving and they said,

because they are dead.

Everything is dead

the chickens, the birds,

the, my mother

and my father, with the birds, with the chicken, with

all of them dead.

My family and I

got traumatised because of the w*r.

I lost my brother,

he was k*lled when he was 15.

I still hear the

sound of crying of families

and people because of losing their

children and the members of their families.

I learnt to be friends with my pain.

They massacred us,

they tortured us,

they bombed at us.

They lined hundreds of Kurdish people in line

and they didn't care how old they were,

five years old boy, 10 years

women, children, one by one they

sh**t and k*ll them

There is no rights for people

in the land that I grew up.

I really knew that if I wanted to go

to Australia by boat,

it's like 50%

I can be alive, 50% I can be

a dead person.

But still I felt I have chance

to be alive, because if I got deported

definitely I would be in prison

or k*lled

in my homeland.

I didn't know how to swim,

I just try to be alive.

I thought 27 years of t*rture was

finished and I was supposed to

start new life,

but the Australian government

started new life for me

and make the horrible situation worse

than the place that I grew up.

When they exiled me to Manus, the first day

I remembered, we were kept in one room.

120 people from different countries,

different culture.

Everything was dirty,

the spiders

painted the ceiling

with cobwebs.

120 people

close to each other

beside, shoulder by shoulder.

There was no space for breathing.

It was a narrow

way between the beds that the officers

were walking among us.

They called our numbers, KNS-88.

It was my number.

Many times, officers came to the rooms

They smashed everything, they step on our belongings,

they threw out everything

A couple of times, they found

phones, and then it would be very

difficult time for us that

they wanted to

bully us that this is a crime, you are not allowed

to have phones.

I had huge insomnia

when I was on Manus.

I couldn't sleep at all,

sometimes two hours a day,

sometimes three hours a day,

was my sleeping

and every day I had nightmares.

Nightmares were a part of detention.

We went to the mess to eat

lunch and dinner or breakfast.

500 people in small space

wanna eat something.

It's very hot, it's 45 degrees.

Why do we have to be in this line

for hours and hours?

The last 100 refugees who were

on the line couldn't get anything.

This situation made us so unwell.

I could hear the complaining of refugees every day.

Some of them have a stomachache, headaches,

kidney pain, lots of different pains

and the only solution for us was

drinking water and Panadol.

I went to

see a nurse

and

she told me that have you thought about

going back to your country?

And I said that I have a stomach ache.

I need you to help me.

And she said that, I prescribe Panadol.

Whenever I heard about Panadol,

I thought that they are just

making fun of us.

They wanted

to continue this t*rture in order to

target our resistance

and we give up and we get back to our countries.

The sadness will remain

in Australia,

they cannot

clear

this sadness,

it is a part of this society now.

The most difficult part in detention was

the time that the government left us alone

behind the fences

without any

food, water, security, power, nothing.

A couple of hours ago, PNG police with

(inaudible) officers came inside the compound and threw out

our remaining water.

PNG immigration and PNG police,

and the Navy, they demolished everything.

They are hitting us, they b*at us,

so now they want to k*ll us,

we don't know what to do, we need help.

After 24 days,

a group of like, a cattle of robots

came to the detention

and they wanted to

move us to another place by force.

We were sitting

on the ground

like the way that I am talking with you,

very peaceful,

we didn't say any words.

They started stoning at us,

they started b*ating us with

iron bars,

lots of police were around us.

One of the police b*at my shoulder

with an iron bar. After

a couple of days, I got a stammer.

I still have the stammer

but I know how to control it. It's

very difficult.

I don't know, how can I

forget those memories, it comes to me.

After spending some time working on a campaign for

another refugee, a young sporting refugee.

I decided to go across to Port Morseby to meet

many of the men who'd been imprisoned on

Manus Island.

One of those was Mostafa,

he was emaciated,

he

was constantly coughing.

Why are we torturing this person?

Australia has been told these

things about them and I'm sitting in front of this young

man who we've ripped eight years of his

life away improperly, and he couldn't be more

lovely, he couldn't be more gentle,

he couldn't be more welcoming.

And I asked him if he would play his song

and he started to play and sing beautifully

and just as he was coming to the key line in the chorus,

he broke down coughing.

And you know, this coughing fit

went on forever and I just sat there, you know

embarrassed thinking, wow, you know, this guy is physically

just broken.

Music, I

sometimes play.

These days, it's very difficult

because asthma is k*lling me.

I don't know how I can survive,

sometimes I feel I am not alive.

When they exiled me

and others to Manus Island,

the feeling was really

sad when I saw this

small island, it's a

remote island actually,

so we trapped

forever.

There is only two seasons in Manus Island,

it's hot and wet,

and you get a sweat every day,

every day, every night, you couldn't sleep

your body, your mind is shocked.

Their treatment

of us was degrading.

They humiliated us

every single day for years.

You should go back to your country, non refugee.

Many of them they come to me and

always I encouraged them: be strong.

There is something inside you,

you need to find it.

From one detention to another detention.

From one country

to another country,

from one prison to another prison

for the government,

we were just human cargo.

I came 2019 to Australia

for medical treatment under Medevac bill.

There wasn't any fresh air, sunshine

For three months I had to fight for this

basic human right.

Finally they opened the

window this size.

I was kept in the Mantra and Park prisons

for approximately 15 months.

My life was a room and a

narrow corridor.

23 hours a day I was

locked up in a room.

I got a terrible PTSD

from Manus.

I don't like

any people like police officers,

come and touch my body. The officers

in the Mantra prison and

the park prison, they did pat searched my

body more than 400 times.

Guard: Like we said just a pat down search mate.

Guard: You understand that no problems?

Well, I just talked with

them that I don't like to have pat search, but because I

have to visit my friends.

Guard: Yep

Guard: It's part of the procedure, hop around for me,

I know

no hands sure, but I will take the video

Guard: Do whatever you want

na.. na.. na

Guard: I tell you what guys, I tell you what guys

Guard: We will take him to escort

Guard: We'll take him

Guard: That's fine. That's fine, we'll take him.

Guard: Can you just put you hands on the wall

Guard: like this, and you just take one shoe off

Guard: show me the bottom of your feet.

I don't want to take off my shoes

Guard: You don't have to put your feet on the floor.

Guard: I need to see underneath your feet.

Guard: Just put like this.

They treat us like we are nothing.

Even wild animal has rights,

even criminals has rights,

what about a refugee?

Among all chaotic situation,

lot's of t*rture

lack of

humanity...

The behavior of officers over there,

those things were horrible.

I just try to find

tranquility for myself.

I try to be kind to myself.

Art helped me

to continue.

Art helped me to be strong.

I didn't want

to escape, I wanted to fight in this situation.

No, you cannot escape from the

situation when you are there, but you can be there and

fight.

It's like battle,

always I say, this is a battle, you need to fight for it.

If you escape. It means you want to

cover your eyes, you cannot see it, but

I was carrying the pain with myself and

at the same time,

I fight with my art against this cruelty.

Always, art, music

it's part of my resistance.

Without those I couldn't really survive.

I think painting is

a kind of friend for my soul.

When I was in detention, it took me

to freedom,

it took my soul to freedom.

Imagine for

eight years, every day, immigration, case managers,

security officers,

you cannot come to Australia.

I accepted in my

soul that it's my life,

I know that, outside this place,

people have normal lives

but also

I should understand that, this is my life,

I'm not gonna be free

but also, I don't want to give up.

So every time

I talk to myself, it will be okay.

It's all

nightmares

I don't know when it's gonna be

my day, but one day will be my day.

And I'll be free.

Wine in Kurdish

culture has a meaning.

I think it's kind of sharing love.

You have a bottle of wine you want to share with friends,

which means brings everyone together.

And you want to share the happiness with wine.

In Kurdistan

it's not allowed but many people they

make it from home and they drink it secretly.

You cannot drink it in public.

I remember when I make wine,

I call my friends...

I have some wine, I can share it with you.

It's so exciting.

This is the first

wine I am making

in Australia.

Today we're gonna press

"Time to Fly" shiraz wine

and I just taste it

I'm very happy with it. The tannins and

flavour. It's nice and it's

about 70 days now,

the fermentation.

Time to Fly, means...

time to fly! You need to be free

and this design

it's about when I was on Manus Island,

it's gonna be surprise for

first for my family and my friends

and I would love to share this wine with

Australian people.

In Kurdistan, in Iran side

you are not allowed even to

write in your language.

And you cannot practice your culture,

and even you cannot talk about your history.

and if you go to a school, you cannot talk in your language,

not Kurdish. Not your mother tongue,

And we are Indigenous there.

We are the owner of that land

and we cannot raise our flag and say,

we are here for thousands and thousands of years.

Congratulations!

Thank you, cheers

I hope it's.. it's a long way to go

before you got to sell it, but

a lot of water's gone under the bridge.

to get here. How do you feel?

Yeah, I feel

so excited.

Imagine how you gonna feel when it goes to bottle!

I cannot wait.

Then the headaches begin.

The making it's the easy part.

Yeah, actually with

your support.

There are some good people around.

Yeah, always

Thank you.

Well, here's to you.

Thank you. Cheers.

Amazing journey.

Yeah.

Thanks

Good

I'm really happy to see you

you're still strong, I like it

I'm trying bro, I'm still trying

Yeah

But it's hard, very hard time

You didn't do anything wrong

You're just looking for safety and your freedom

You are a good man.

I know I understand

That's what we need from you

Thank you buddy

Thank you, be strong

I love you bro

I need you

to have the biggest smile, always

Yes, that's the face

That's the resistance

That's the way you fight for your freedom

Thank you

Thank you

Have a good night

see ya

Love you

see ya

So they're caught in this interminable hell

where all of these things

are set up in order to, to terrorise

them so much that they

basically give up either on life, or give up

on trying to find refuge.

Just imagine that

from an Australian perspective for a moment.

The most vulnerable people in the world

have to actually flee, have been

proven to have fled persecution, which means

imprisonment, att*cks, death.

And we've treated them so badly,

that actually some of them ultimately decide,

I'll just take my chances

with my own government back home,

which means I likely to lose my life

but if I stay here it's gone anyway. That's the

bargain that we try to strike with them.

The way we treat the most vulnerable infects all

of our view of who we are

and how we treat each other.

If we were to become,

and should be, a country where we say:

we are going to treat everyone

with basic standards of decency.

When we do that as a country, everyone is uplifted,

everyone is more hopeful, everyone becomes

more caring, more considerate

and isn't that what society is supposed to be?

I was in prison more than

2,700 days by the

Australian government but my message

to you wonderful people is love,

and I believe that love

is the answer. This is the way that we can

k*ll the monsters.

I am asking you to listen to your heart

so that together, we can

create a wave of change that will tear down

the walls of the Park prison and other

detention centres and free our brothers

and sisters.

Still there

are many behind the fences.

They haven't committed any crime.

It doesn't make sense. They should be free.

No children should be behind the fences.

No any women

should be behind their fences. They are not criminals.

The government spent billions of dollars

to keep them inside the detention

and separate them from the society and

the government want to show that,

these people are bad, these people are good,

refugees are dangerous, Aboriginal

different, they just want to separate

and create

layer of discrimination.

When people get depressed, when

they want to k*ll themselves,

when they want to harm themselves,

they think that they are alone.

It's like a responsibility

for everyone that

help vulnerable people

to be strong

and show them that

they are not alone.

You helped me, to

get the voice and and send it to people in Australia.

You gave me power, I felt that this is

something that I have to keep it for everyone,

it's not for me, it's for everyone.

The more I got tortured from the government,

the more I became friends with people in Australia.

A big part of

my resilience and the way I got

free is absolutely because of people in Australia.

And now

I have a big family.

It makes me so happy.

Hello!

Oh, it is you

It is, It is, It is.

Oh.

Hello!

This is magic

This is absolute magic

I can't believe it.

Oh my darling,

oh, my precious boys

wonderful

and now I see you free!

I cannot believe it.

You are my first Australian friend.

You are very kind

amazing.

Wonderful.

If you remember my English was poor on Manus Island.

I asked you to help me with English

I had to rewrite your poems.

Yes

It was all about poetry.

I've got a book here somewhere

here, with

me trying to learn your language.

Wow

Kurdish language

Wow.

Yes, it's

all your poetry's in here,

your very first poems in this little book.

Yes, its the most extraordinary thing to come across,

these

young men who have been through hell,

suddenly appearing and being real people.

Yes, just beautiful, wonderful thing to

make that connection

Yeah, very deciding thing in life

of what your values are when something like this

comes and hits you.

You've got to get in there and do something.

Thank you for all your support

and all your activism for

all of us. Thank you.

Well, you're very, very, very welcome.

You keep collecting my poetry

oh my god

Yeah, I'm honoured to be that person

to publish your poems one day.

Well, if you do it and I don't do it, that's okay,

I'm just never going to do it myself.

I love your poems, that's why

and of course you are beautiful, kind

and you help me

a lot.

The first poem written by Farhad Bandesh

in 2015.

He wrote it after finding me on Facebook.

All his creative skills came into play

and kept him mentally and spiritually healthy.

"Silence of Nature"

That was a powerful poem you wrote.

Thank you.

Was it the first poem you ever wrote at all?

Yeah, that's the first, I couldn't

believe it, you said no, this is a good,

this is a good one.

this is a poem.

Well, do you know the words you said

that struck me most deeply

were the two words, "woven oppression".

Yeah.

That was fantastically original

I'd never seen, oppression woven before,

but it was it was woven through

you all.

Woven into your blood, woven into your

brains,

deliberately.

God that describes what was done to you all so deeply

and so well.

Yeah.

It was just an extremely important experience

of knowing what

lack of freedom does to a human being.

The utter cruelty of it.

It was today, last year

one year ago.

How is the feeling now, compared to then?

I think

it's perfect

It was like a nightmare

everything is beautiful

I couldn't see any kind of flower or

trees.

Now I can see everything.

The first time I talked with Christina was

a week after the seige

when police att*cked us

on Manus

and I had stammer, I couldn't talk.

and she introduced herself

my name is Christina ..., I am a trauma councillor

I know your story

I heard about what happened to you and other refugees

I'm here to help you

don't worry I understand

what was

In the past, but you will be ok,

just be patient

and slowly

she talked to me, like a lullaby

I couldn't talk with my family

no friends.

I got very isolated.

It was a huge

trauma, when I talk...

all the time stammer

and she said, don't worry, you dont need to talk.

You just say yes or no

or you just nod your head.

or you just say mhmm.

and slowly, slowly I got better

and she said, Manus is not safe for you.

There is a reason you have to be alive.

Just be proud of yourself and be happy.

You are a survivor Moz.

You dont die.

I miss her so much.

Moz, dont worry about me, I'm sorry, I'm just

I've either got pain in my back

or then when I take tablets. I feel really drowsy

and I have to lay down.

In 2019 she called me

and she said um,

she's going to be alive for a few weeks.

Her doctor talked to her and she said, just a few weeks.

and I didn't know what does that mean.

What does a few weeks mean.

I remember

her daughter Molly called me

and she said mum is ready

and I had a huge stress

and I just grabbed the guitar.

I wrote a song for Christina

and I played it for her

I think, six or seven times.

The last time when I played it for her

she slept.

What a sad day.

Imagine the best friend

in anyones life, especially me in that situation

but know when I look at

what happened in the past, I think

sometimes

someone comes to our lives

just like an angel.

Yeah, she was definitely an angel

and she saved my life.

Love you to bits

We liked it first, and then we share it with

other refugees. We had many concerts, small concerts

and we played it

a lot, and the people really liked it.

This song took us to somewhere else from the detention.

There were different nationalities among refugees.

Bengali, Somalian, Sudanese, Iraqi

Kurdish.

Most of the time when we played music together,

some of them randomly came close to us

and listen to the music and they

clapped and we were happy about it.

This is the beauty of the art always, eliminates

the borders and makes everyone become united

and there is no any difference.

When you listen to Kurdish music

takes you to somewhere.

When I listen to English, Spanish takes me to somewhere

I could feel it inside, it doesn't matter

I don't understand the words, but I understand

the feeling of the music.

That's the beauty of art and music.

Hello?

What's happening fellas?

Hey Nick

Hi, nice to meet you.

Likewise.

Welcome.

Thanks.

Hi Nick.

Hello Buddy

Good to see you again.

You too.

Welcome.

Thank you...

Ready to record a song?

Ready to go.

Your version B...

This is one of the songs, always we sing.

Do you remember?

Yeah

This song it's really

common song in Kurdistan.

It's a beautiful song.

How did it go?

You wanna go?

Ok.

I forgot.