He spoke about asylum seekers being referred to by their boat arrival number, rather than by their name. He told me about responding to three attempted suicides, about men in detention dragging their bodies across the jagged coral ground to inflict "excruciating" lacerations upon themselves. I tried to imagine what would happen without whistleblowers like Martin, without smuggled phones with their built-in cameras, without encrypted messaging technology, without the internet for sending these messages around the world.
My CNET colleagues travelling through Europe saw the the refugee crisis firsthand, They took photos with children, sat lifeproof slam iphone 8 plus / 7 plus case - night flash in tents, heard stray dogs bark and smelled the rot of discarded life jackets, But I got lost in words, Government rhetoric around immigration, official policies, draconian legislation, bureaucratic emails -- even the 2,000 reports leaked by The Guardian -- it all amounted to a sea of words, But words on a page only go so far in capturing the lived experiences of these asylum seekers in detention, Words can't capture the fear of traveling in a leaky boat to flee persecution, the feeling of coral and rock underfoot, the endless days of waiting, the desperation..
Hidden camera footage, obtained for the documentary film "Chasing Asylum," shows the grim conditions in Nauru. The refugees trying to reach Australia have lived these experiences, and they all have a story to tell. Just like Behrouz Boochani. Hours before I was due to publish my story about tech in offshore detention, the news broke that the Australian and PNG governments had agreed to close Manus down. I immediately got on WhatsApp and typed a message to Behrouz. "Have you heard about this?" I typed.
His replies came thick and fast, "Yes.""I just received it.""Its incredible for people in Manus prison that feel close to freedom."But later that night, I felt a heavy weight lifeproof slam iphone 8 plus / 7 plus case - night flash descend again, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton gave no timeline on the camp closure, only promising that refugees in Manus would never be settled in Australia, So what does the future hold now for people like Behrouz? Do they resettle on Manus, outside the camp's fences? Behrouz had told me he would never accept the Australian Government would "sell" him to PNG, Do the refugees simple go home? Do they get shipped to Nauru?..
Or do they end up somewhere that is, unthinkably, more dangerous and oppressive than the Manus Island detention camp? Do they have their phones confiscated again and end up cut off from the world once more?. While Behrouz, and other refugees like him, have a phone, the plight of refugees won't stay hidden. There will always be people on the other end of the line willing to listen -- I know it's a message I certainly couldn't ignore. And with the help of tech like phone cameras, Facebook or even a WhatsApp message sent from a beat-up old phone, these messages will be heard.
