The men demonstrate their improvised well — Photo: Michael Green

‘Twenty four days we lived as a nation … The only way I can describe [it] is that we were a nation.’

– Abdul Aziz Muhamat

The detention centre on Manus Island might be closed, but Aziz – and the vast majority of the men who were held there – remain on the island, living in three different centres.

By early 2019, Aziz is well into his sixth year, waiting. In that time, he’s felt free for only a few weeks – those few weeks when the immigration detention system disintegrated around him.

In this episode, The Messenger returns to late 2017, and the crucial period when Australia shut down the Manus Regional Processing Centre and the men refused to leave. We take you inside the centre as the standoff unfolds. There are no guards, no caseworkers, no immigration officials – and no food, water, medicine or electricity.

Aziz and his friends are in charge. How did they survive? And why did they stay?

Transcript

A transcript of this episode is coming soon.

Further reading

• 'No Exit: The ongoing abuses of Australia’s refugee policy' by Michael Green, Harper's Magazine, July 2018

In this episode

Abdul Aziz Muhamat

Michael Green Behrouz Boochani Benham Satah Poli Boas Clarence Parisau Michael Kuweh

Our theme music was composed by Raya Slavin. Music used in this episode includes 'Unrest' by Adrian Klumpes, 'La Mer' by Pivot, 'Southeast of Boston' by June of 44, 'Out with the Cold' by Kaffe Matthews, 'Rhodes Viola Multiple' by Keith Fullerton Whitman, '1.3'by Piano Magic, 'Passages' by Bowery Electric, 'Shine' by Klara Lewis and 'Iberia Eteria' by Biosphere.

More information

The Messenger is a co-production of Behind the Wire and the Wheeler Centre. It’s produced by Michael Green, André Dao, Hannah Reich and Bec Fary, with Jon Tjhia and Sophie Black at the Wheeler Centre.

Narration by Michael Green. With reporting by Abdul Aziz Muhamat. Transcription by Claire McGregor, Carolyn Turner, Tiarne Cook, Julia Earley and many more​. This episode was edited and mixed by Michael Green and Jon Tjhia.

Thank…

Mary Kostakidis and Joseph Stiglitz at the Athenaeum Theatre — Photo: Scott Limbrick

‘Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth,’ Joseph Stiglitz has argued.

Is our economic system fundamentally broken? Who, exactly, are the 1% and how did they get to control so much of the world’s wealth and resources? And are free-market fundamentalists shooting themselves in the Louboutin with short-term, self-serving policies?

These are among the questions that preoccupy Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz – author, academic and perhaps the closest thing in the world to a celebrity economist.

'I don't think anybody today would say the bankers' pursuit of self-interest lead to the wellbeing of society.'

Joseph Stiglitz

Starting out as a student activist during the civil-rights movement, Stiglitz, now a professor at Columbia University, has devoted his working life to understanding and rectifying the complex problems of global poverty and inequality. Stiglitz coined the notion of ‘the 1%’ in his influential 2012 book, The Price of Inequality, and has served as an economic advisor at the United Nations and as chief economist at the World Bank.

In Australia to receive the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize, Stiglitz appears here in conversation with Mary Kostakidis at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne to discuss global inequality – and what we can do about it. Is profound economic overhaul possible in advanced democracies? Which old ideas about wealth distribution are discredited, and which deserve to be revived? And how does the recent global wave of populist political movements play into, and against, the economic status quo?

Presented in partnership with the Sydney Peace Foundation, Oxfam Australia and the Reichstein Foundation.