HIGH COURT
06.02.2016
It has been a hard week for many with the High Court decision coming down largely in favor of the government.
Here are some responses from writers in detention.
Firstly:
Aziz is a writer and human rights defender who has been detained on Manus Island for 31 months.
He prefaces the poem with:
I wrote this poem after the High Court ruled against us which is very disappointing for all of us. The refugee activists were carrying out big protests around the cities of Australia which will make us to not lose hope although we have been languishing in detention centre for 31 months and now languish indefinately.
We are in huge conflict with our mental health because of ongoing torture and trauma including harassment from the staff.
I am requesting from all of my friends to keep hope.
Let us break this silence of the coconut trees and the ocean.
Let us back to our normal lives outside of the fences.
image by Mohsen Jakarta
Who will cry for the young men?
Who will cry for the young men
lost and all alone?
Who will cry for the young man
abandoned without his own?
Who will cry for the young men
tortured in detention?
Who will cry for the young man
who cries himself to sleep?
Who will cry for the young men
who never have their keeps?
Who will cry for the young men
who walk in burning sand?
Who will cry for the young men,
the boy inside the man,
who knows the world’s hurt and pain?
Who will cry for the young men,
who died and die again?
Who will cry for the young men?
Good men they are trying to be.
Who will cry for the young men?
I cry inside of me.
Who will cry for the young men?
I will.
We will together.
– Aziz, Manus.
And an article by Behrouz Boochani in The Age
Tags: #aziz #writers #poets # manusisland #letthemstay #pacificblacksites, #manusiland #asylumseeker #cryingforyoungmen, letthemstay, writingthroughfences highcourt whowillcryfortheyoungmen aziz writers manusisland closeblacksites poetry refugees asylumseekers theage