Australia's refugee detention regime: Offshore and unaccountable

In January 2019, Behrouz Boochani won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's top literary award, for his memoir No Friend But the Mountains. A Kurdish Iranian journalist and writer, Boochani has been detained on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island since he attempted to reach Australia to seek asylum in 2013, so he was unable to accept the award in person. Boochani is one of more than 4,000 people who have been subjected to mandatory, indefinite, and unreviewable detention since 2012 under Australia's current policy of offshore processing. The policy applies to all people traveling to Australia by boat without a valid entry visa-even those, like Boochani, who qualify as refugees under the 1951 United Nations Convention. Conservative politicians in other countries have touted Australia's policies as a model for their own responses to refugee challenges. The fact that Australia has "stopped the boats" lends legitimacy to similar attempts.