There are prisons and then there are detention facilities. Over the last ten years Australia’s refugee policy has been a focus of international attention. We rarely see images of what happens inside. Our government and our population does not want to see. We do no want to humanise the people there. We no not wish to see the horrors that happens in those walls. We do not want to imagine that the same will be our experience. We assume that white privilege or being Australian that halo of that privilege will protect us. I grew up in a more humane society that accepted that if we bomb a country we take responsibility for the people we displace. We now seem to understand that when we invade a country we should take only it’s resources.
I once told my father, that if i was to die overseas, please do not let the press call me an ‘innocent victim’. I was not i am fully aware that the world is unjust and my privilege within this system, may be targeted. In 2014 this happened. I was scammed at a level that is, to most Australians, incomprehensible. I went to meet a Manila local, i’d met online a few months before, and instead was abducted by police out of uniform, with out announcement, and an attempt at extortion was made. When my life situation did not reflect their cultural understanding, I was charged with a made up crime. After a sex months i brought a case against the police for grave misconduct. When that got hot, i was indefinitely detained by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, extensively to stop me testifying.
There are prisons and then there are detention facilities. Over the last ten years Australia’s refugee policy has been a focus of international attention. We rarely see images of what happens inside. Our government and our population does not want to see. We do no want to humanise the people there. We no not wish to see the horrors that happens in those walls. We do not want to imagine that the same will be our experience. We assume that white privilege or being Australian that halo of that privilege will protect us. I grew up in a more humane society that accepted that if we bomb a country we take responsibility for the people we displace. We now seem to understand that when we invade a country we should take only it’s resources.
I once told my father, that if i was to die overseas, please do not let the press call me an ‘innocent victim’. I was not i am fully aware that the world is unjust and my privilege within this system, may be targeted. In 2014 this happened. I was scammed at a level that is, to most Australians, incomprehensible. I went to meet a Manila local, i’d met online a few months before, and instead was abducted by police out of uniform, with out announcement, and an attempt at extortion was made. When my life situation did not reflect their cultural understanding, I was charged with a made up crime. After a sex months i brought a case against the police for grave misconduct. When that got hot, i was indefinitely detained by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, extensively to stop me testifying. An interview withe HeadOn can be read here.
This project was exhibited as part of HeadOn's 2022 festival and as part of World Pride in Paddington.
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