A refugee detained for more than a year in two Melbourne hotels has spoken out about the enduring trauma of his ordeal, saying the nightmare of his prolonged unlawful detention left him “dreaming of sunlight”.
The federal court will on Tuesday begin hearing a case brought by Mostafa “Moz” Azimitabar against the Australian government, in which he alleges he was unlawfully detained for 15 months in Melbourne’s Park and Mantra hotels.
The government has used hotels as alternative places of detention (Apods) to hold refugees and asylum seekers while they undergo medical treatment, after being transferred from offshore detention centres.
The latest figures show 112 people, including 29 of what the government describes as “illegal maritime arrivals”, were detained in Apods in March this year, though not all of them were held in hotels. Some have been detained for more than two years.
Azimitabar’s case alleges he endured ongoing trauma as a result of unlawful detention.
“Many people think about buying a house, flying to Europe, visiting their friends,” he said on the eve of his hearing. “My dream was receiving sunlight. Something that people who are free, they never think about it. They have this beautiful gift, they can walk and they have sunlight. I was dreaming of this.”
Azimitabar, a Kurdish musician, fled persecution in Iran and was held in Australia’s offshore detention regime in Papua New Guinea for more than six years. He was seriously ill and brought to Australia under the medevac laws for treatment in Melbourne.
Azimitabar was detained in the hotels between 11 November 2019 and 21 January 2021, initially in the Mantra for 13 months, then the Park.
In the Mantra, he was at least able to put his hand out of a small window. But the Park hotel had only dark glass facing a cement wall. Azimitabar likened it to “an invisible prison”, where he could neither wave to people outside nor see trees.
Azimitabar had severe asthma and was struggling to breath even before he was transferred to Australia. Without fresh air, his health deteriorated while in hotel detention. He said he was repeatedly searched and handled by guards and was treated as a dangerous criminal, who had no rights.
“I am a very sensitive person. I don’t understand why every time I was transferred for medical treatment, they did pat-searches of my body and locked me up in a room,” he said. “I still cannot understand why it happened. And it happened in the name of ‘good Australia’.”
Amnesty International is supporting Azimitabar’s case.
Amnesty’s impact director, Tim O’Connor, said the federal court case was focused only on the circumstances of Azimitabar’s detention in the hotels. He said the hotel detention compounded the “deprivation of hope” caused by mandatory detention and the traumas he endured on Manus Island.
“It had a really dire impact on him,” O’Connor said. “The room they put him in was next to the smoking room, there wasn’t good ventilation, and he lived for a significant period of time where he couldn’t get out at all, he was locked up inside 24 hours a day.”
Azimitabar is now living in the community and said he was trying to learn to cope with what he had been through.
“It’s important that I have my human rights. But I don’t receive it the way they just pointed at me [and said] ‘you don’t have rights, you are illegal, you are dangerous’,” he said. “The way I received this kind of image from the politicians who locked me up there, it’s connected to trauma. They are hurting me with this.”
The home affairs department has previously said it was aware of the claim lodged by Azimitabar but “as the matter is before the court it would be inappropriate to comment further”.
