The Messenger
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#13 A Stranger in Geneva
Aziz in the snow, in Switzerland — Photo: Michael Green
– Abdul Aziz Muhamat'Hard to imagine. Start your life again. Have your own house, your own family.'
Incredibly, Aziz is in Switzerland. And he’s just won a major international award for human rights defenders.
He’s swamped with attention and adoration, briefings and business cards. But he is only allowed to be in Geneva for three short weeks. Then he has to return to Manus Island – back to the dangerous situation he’s being celebrated for campaigning against.
In this episode, we follow Aziz as he negotiates meetings with diplomats and speeches to the UN. He struggles with an unexpected, oppressive dilemma – should he board a plane back to his brothers on Manus, or seek yet another uncertain path to safety and freedom?
Transcript
A transcript of this episode is available here (PDF format).
Further reading
- 'Aziz: A Stranger in Geneva', produced by Michael Green for Earshot, ABC Radio National (first broadcast 28 September 2019)
- 'Flight from Manus' by Michael Green, ABC Radio National, 1 October 2019
In this episode
-
Abdul Aziz Muhamat
- Michael Green
- Peggy Hicks
- Michael Khambatta
Our theme music was composed by Raya Slavin. Music used in this episode was produced by Hour House (Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna), except for 'I am the Changer', by Cotton Jones.
More information
The Messenger is a co-production of Behind the Wire and the Wheeler Centre. This episode was originally commissioned and produced for the ABC Radio National programme, Earshot. It was produced by Michael Green. The supervising producer was Lyn Gallacher. The sound engineer was Melissa May.
Narration by Michael Green. Additional editing and mixing by Jon Tjhia.
Thank you
André Dao, Jon Tjhia, Hannah Reich, Bec Fary and Sophie Black. Also Camilla Chapman, Cecilia Cannon and Sean Cole, and Behind the Wire's many participants and volunteers.
Who?
Abdul Aziz Muhamat
Abdul Aziz Muhamat is a 24-year-old man from Darfur, Sudan. He is from the Zaghawa ethnicity, and with his family, he fled his village to a refugee camp. He arrived in Australia by boat in 2013 and was taken to Manus Island, where he remains.
Michael Green
Michael Green is a journalist in Melbourne. He has written about environmental and social issues for the Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Nature, Nautilus, Smith Journal, Right Now and Overland, among others. He is the coordinator of Behind the Wire, and has been working on a book of people’s stories from detention called They Cannot Take the Sky, which will be published in March 2017 by Allen & Unwin. He is also producing an exhibition at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum based on the stories in the book, which will open on 17 March 2017.
The Messenger
From Behind the Wire and the Wheeler Centre, The Messenger brings you into the Australian immigration detention centre on Manus Island – and reveals, in intimate detail, one man's experience of what it's really like to flee tragedy and seek asylum by boat.
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