Refugee Detained For Eight Years Is Now Taking The Government To Court
"What the government did was illegal, and I will never give up."
A refugee is taking the federal government to court to seek compensation for his time in hotel detention.
Moz Azimitabar, who was held offshore and in Australia for eight years, will participate in a two-day hearing in Victoria to challenge the legality of hotels as Alternative Places of Detention (APOD).
The Federal Court in Melbourne heard on Tuesday that tinted windows, limited access to sunshine and fresh air, restricted movement, and the presence of guards made these sites inhabitable, with Azimitabar’s legal team arguing that the Immigration Minister didn’t have the powers to approve hotels being used as onshore detention centres in the first place, according to The Age.
“Fulfilling this responsibility to those I love helps me to try to understand how to live as a human in this world,” wrote Azimitabar in the Guardian on Tuesday. “I don’t want anyone to silence me. I am alive, and I have rights. I am a survivor. What the government did was illegal, and I will never give up.”
The Kurdish man was sent to Manus Island in 2013 for six years after fleeing conflict in Iran, before being brought to Australia under Medevac laws in 2019 for urgent medical care, where he was locked up in two hotels for 15 months. He was finally freed from Melbourne’s Park Hotel — which also temporarily detained Novak Djokovic— back in January on a restricted visa.
“The government used the hotel as a prison to lock me up and the situation made me more sick. My body is trembling when I think about the times I was in those hotels,” he said on The Project. “Definitely it was worse than Manus Island. I was locked up… I spent 23 hours a day in a room,” he said. “I was transferred to Australia for medical treatment and I didn’t receive any proper medication.”
“The case before the Federal Court will argue that Moz’s detention in the Mantra Hotel, and then the Park Hotel where he was transferred to for medical care was unlawful under the Migration Act, as the government does not have the legislative power to turn such hotels into detention centres in this way,” explained Amnesty International Australia, who is assisting in Azimitabar’s case.
“If the court rules in Moz’s favour, the same legal argument applies to anyone who has been or is currently detained in an APOD,” they said. “While Moz couldn’t seek relief on behalf of others through this case, the Government would need to apply the consequences of the court’s decision more broadly.”
The case began on the ninth anniversary of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announcing that asylum seekers arriving by boat would have “have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”. More than a hundred refugees are currently being held in an APOD to this day.
Photo Credit: Mostafa Azimitabar/Twitter