Refugee Writers - Beyond Detention
The recent explosion of a boat of exiles off the northern coast of Australia brought back into the headlines the plight of one of the most desperate movements of people across the world - those forced to flee unsafe homelands to save their lives. Ruth Skilbeck surveyed the harsh landscape of exile and spoke to former Ivory Coast political journalist, Cheikh Kone, about his journey, his writing, starting a newspaper in a detention center, and his new life in Australia.
Refugees of war, conflict and environmental disaster are increasing in number due to increasing global instability. Yet despite the fact that western countries- that are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Refugee Convention, have a common obligation to protect and support the rights of refugees including shelter, fair treatment and the right to seek asylum- in practice many refugees have faced further obstacles – if and when they finally do reach a destination country.
Over the past 60 years 700,000 refugees and humanitarian migrants have made Australia their home and become citizens (figures from the Refugee Council of Australia.) Yet for many refugees in recent years the journey to Australia has become increasingly perilous and traumatic.
In the most severe years of mandatory indefinite detention, one effective intervention was the compilation of a book of writings by asylum seekers in detention, Another Country-writers in detention edited by novelists Thomas Keneally and Rosie Scott. Supported by Sydney PEN, publication of the anthology, by Halstead Press in 2004, helped secure the release of many of the writers in the anthology, as legitimate refugees. Most significantly the anthology gave the writers a voice, an entry point into public discourse. Over the past decade, much has been heard about refugees and exiles – especially by way of political rhetoric – but still refugees are seldom given the opportunity to speak for themselves in the media.
The stories of refugees add to the rich diversity of Australia’s cultural landscape, and the range of stories, poems, short narratives and theatre work in Another Country contribute to this wider story. The accounts in this anthology are of traumatic journeys and experiences, of hellish limbo and the pain of imprisonment in exile, and the power, strength and beauty of the human spirit under extreme duress. Since this anthology was published what has happened to these writers? Where are they now, what have been their experiences in making the transition into living in Australian society?
Cheikh Kone is one of several of the writers I made contact with and spoke to about their new lives. Now a field officer for a union in Canberra, with a degree in law, married with a child, and a permanent resident, his present position of stability has been reached only after a long and dangerous journey into exile- including spending almost three years in Port Hedland Detention Centre in Western Australia.
In 2000 Cheikh Kone, was a political journalist and supporter of Democracy in the one-party rule of the Ivory Coast when he was forced to flee his homeland due to articles he wrote about the Government. His story began as a student of communications, studying advertising and hoping to work in television, when like many students, he became involved in the political student movements that were responding to the increasing political turbulence in his country. He told me: “While I was a student things started to get really murky, you know, politically, get crazy.” He became a junior political reporter working, in the field, for a major newspaper, The Patriot.
Chiekh explained that after the peaceful military coup of 1999, the ensuing election in 2000 was suspected of being rigged. “A [source] of mine told me you know what was happening – he lost the election but he’s going to force the result... I called my boss, the editor of the paper, and I told him about this story and he said if you’ve got a story well bring it out...The story was supposed to be published the next day, but it hadn’t been written. Yet someone on the paper knew about it, and went to tell the army and they were looking for me. Not just for me but me and my boss....” He was told that “if you don’t leave the country right away – and find a safe place for hiding” that he would be killed.
He was driven-by a friend of his father- across Ghana under a blanket in a 4 wheel drive to a ship he believed was going to take him to Europe. Instead he was put off in Durban where after 7 weeks surviving on scraps on the streets he stowed away with another Ivory Coast refugee on a ship they were told was bound for Belgium. Instead 8 days later, after hardly eating or drinking for the length of the journey, he arrived in Perth. Only to be locked up in the Port Hedland detention centre for almost three years – before International PEN (the writers advocacy group endorsed by the UN)lobbied for and helped secure his release. He told me that the conditions in detention were intolerable. “It seemed like there was this [official] feeling that we don’t want you here, it doesn’t matter what you say, we might give you a visa later but we will break you, you know that kind of attitude. It was not like they said we know you are telling us that you come from a difficult situation, we can help but now we need to find out what really happened, there was nothing like that. Instead it was like: why the hell did you come here in the first place, you know? I think that was one of the main things: that people felt that they were so unwelcome no matter what they did...Yeah that was really key to the story. We were told that we don’t believe what you are saying anyway. They say that just to break your spirit, basically, that was the attitude.”
At Port Hedland detention centre he and some other inmates started up a newspaper. “We had a committee management that said we could have a newsletter. We were allowed to have a computer at least a couple of hours every day so we started a little newspaper called Freedom. We did only three issues, once a month.”
But, he says: “The second issue I got called up in the directors, the immigration, the manager of the detention centre in his room. He told me that my writing was too gloomy. That that wasn’t a good thing for this place.” They wanted him to write humorous articles. “And I said: well, like there’s nothing funny to write about in this place, this is probably the saddest place I’ve ever seen. We’re finding young kids and women sitting there doing nothing with their life apart from getting depressed. So they said: well, if you don’t, we won’t allow you to write. But [meanwhile] with the first issue, and with the second, people who got their visas were leaving and I smuggled a copy out so people could read it on the outside. I faxed a couple of copies to Amnesty International overseas ... I decided, okay, I want to keep on writing so I started to write a poem: on the door of my room, on the wall, on the ceilings. I just wrote everywhere, and there were things from political speeches from Nelson Mandela or Luther King, talking about freedom basically ...just to let them know that, yes, I do still believe what I mean, I just wanna make sure that other people know that it’s okay to be free like this is not utopia, we people can be free. I did a lot of writing, like pasted on my wall, and everywhere I could basically. Some Australian people [from outside] got involved knowing what we are doing- and I asked for and I got my own computer, and so then I started to write, a story...”
Cheikh explains that what kept him sane was communication and contact with people, the many ‘ordinary Australians’ on the outside who were making and maintaining contact with exiles in detention.
“That was the catalyst for everything, basically. Not only for me, but for the rest of the people in detention.” They were contacted by individuals and groups including PEN, A Just Australia, Rural Australia for Refugees. “I was asked by people when I got out of detention: why are you sane? Because most people that we know when they come out of detention have really lost it completely. I said: I really made sure that I was in contact with people as much as possible. I spent hours on the phone all the time and not only that – but also talking in that environment with people. That showed me that I wasn’t worthless, you know, because being in detention gives you this sense of being worthless, you’re not at home, you’re not where you want to go, you’re not in prison, see it’s just, it’s the middle of nowhere, that feeling. So just being in touch with people, talking to people in the community was really, really important just that verbal communication with people and then letters, and then people, like, saying: yeah, we know how you feel, even though we’re not there, and we believe your story. In any case, even if it’s not true, we just want to make sure that it’s given...We don’t want to know anything. We believe you and we want to make sure that it’s told, then later we can decide if it’s not true or not if we get the real story. That [unconditional acceptance] was really, really important for those people. And just people saying I’ll send you a phone card so you can contact your family, things like that. And that’s when PEN did start helping, wanted to find out what was happening, and from that time on the story was more public... Rosie [Scott] through PEN would write and also call up on the phone and tell me what was happening on the outside in relation to the world. Not only personally but around all the refugee policy in general.”
Cheikh was in Port Hedland Detention Centre from January 2001 to August 2003. After his release he was invited by International PEN to speak at a writer’s conference in Barcelona. PEN was going to pay all his expenses . But as he was preparing to leave, he was sent a bill of $89,000 – for the cost of his imprisonment. He was required to pay this before being able to leave and re-enter the country, so he could not travel to the writers festival.
Since his arrival into Australian society he has worked in a variety of jobs and continues to write.
“I had a job as a soccer coach and also as a teacher’s aide in a private high school in Sydney. I worked there for 8 months then I applied to do Law at UTS and I was accepted and went to work for the Law Centre as a para-legal. I worked there for 6 months in Sydney. I was in touch with some journalists and that helped, they paid my ticket from Port Hedland to Sydney, the Australian Journalists Association, which is a section of the MEAA [When I got out] I used to go to the Sydney Morning Herald often... the ACTU was starting a traineeship for union organisers and the Alliance was looking for a couple of people. The secretary of the MEAA, asked would like you to come and work for us... We had a formal interview and he said we’ll take you. The traineeship was 9 months and he said if we like you after the traineeship we’ll keep you. I was there for 18 months. I resigned because it wasn’t very challenging any more. I applied for the job in Canberra, field officer for the CPSU - Computer and Public Service Union. That was in Sept 2006 and I’ve been there in Canberra since then looking after public servants basically.”
This has been a long journey, exile, migration, detention and finally being freed in Australia. How have these experiences affected his writing and how has his perspective as a writer shaped the way these experiences have affected him?
“That’s really hard to say because I think my view of the world has changed, which means my way of writing would have changed in the sense that I believed in that democratic ideal that I always believed that democracy would do the right thing by its people, the system is flawless, people will always pick the right leaders and those who are elected will be fair to people. And if there’s an outcry, there’s a decision they don’t want it to happen. But being here for me well my view of democracy has changed and that has also changed my way of writing. I haven’t done much writing. I do a lot of speaking (laughs). I went to a lot of refugees advocacy conferences when I was here in Sydney and that basically was my writing and expressing myself verbally; and that was mainly a lot of anger. I was really, really disappointed in all democratic systems and what they produce and basically that changed my way of writing. It changed me in the sense that I wouldn’t say I’ve become an anarchist but I’m really disappointed in this whole system.”
Cheikh Kone is currently writing the story of his journey to a new life in Australia.
