WhatsApp messages by Manus Island refugee win major journalism award

A podcast made from 5,000 WhatsApp messages sent on a smuggled smartphone by a refugee on the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre has won an award for excellence in journalism.

“The Messenger” podcast, which won best radio/audio feature at Australia’s Walkley Awards on Wednesday, was produced by a team led by freelance journalist Michael Green, who exchanged voice messages with Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Muhamat.

The podcast reveals, in intimate detail, Muhamat’s memories of fleeing tragedy and seeking asylum by boat as well as his recent forcible removal from the centre in Papua New Guinea.

“It has given me a chance to say something about my life, and also to report what has been happening for the last four and a half years in the detention centre,” Muhamat said in a statement.

“I am speechless because I just came out of a kind of trauma that I haven’t seen in my life before.”

The United Nations and human rights groups have for years criticised Australia’s offshore detention centre policy, citing human rights abuses and called for their closure.

Australia officially closed the Manus Island centre on Oct. 31, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court, but the asylum seekers refused to move …read more