Transcript

Narrator:
From 1992 until 2013 people who arrived in Australia seeking asylum were placed in mandatory detention. These are some of their stories.

Music

Woman:
As you know very many students in this school are of refugee background. And some of our students have been in detention centres or in refugee camps.

Woman:
Once we got to the detention centre as fourteen years old child I was scared and also the guards with guns and I was like, are they just Taliban in a different uniform?

Woman:
We were sent to Woomera Detention Centre. It was a lot of people, I don’t know a couple of hundred and none of them had actually heard anything about their cases. Some of them had been there for like two years.

Music

Man:
I end up in Villawood Detention Centre and I spent there almost three years. Every single day I was thinking how I can get out from here. How I can let the world know like these people who are suffering.

Woman:
Basically, it was like a prison, you got like a two metre by two metre room for four people. There was no activity.

Man:
We are subject to an eternal imprisonment because we didn’t know even when we’ll get out from detention.

Woman:
So, some people in the camp they got really upset and angry, they had like family back in their countries waiting for them to hear something. We didn’t even have the right to call them or to send letters out or anything like that. There was absolutely no connection with the outside world.

Man:
I saw people sewing their lips together, trying to commit suicide.

Woman:
I think it really did matter that Nooria Wazefadost stood up in public rallies, time after time after time, to say ‘Children should be released from detention.’ And this was a very brave thing to do because she was on a temporary visa at the time.

Music

Narrator:
As a child Nooria was asked to speak at a refugee rally.

Woman:
And this child with very broken English stood up and said very powerfully…

Woman:
Children should not be in detention centres and they should be in school.

Woman:
She was actually the first face of a child out of detention in the community, the first person to have a public identity.

Music

Student:
The Australian Government should abolish all the detention centres and all these camps that they’re doing for refugees because those boat people or asylum seekers they’re coming here for a reason. They are looking for their own safety because some of them are going to be killed if they go back home.

Man:
I am against for anyone taking the same journey that I did, but sometimes people do not have any other choice. And for them to live in a constant fear of losing their life or be tortured every day they say ‘Okay, I will take this step and if I’m lucky I will get to somewhere where I will be able to live a life of safety and freedom.’

Music