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  • Black Bodies for Political Profit:Sudanese and Somali Standpoints on Australia's Racialized Border Regime
  • Omid Tofighian (bio)

In memory of Faysal Ishak Ahmed. Incarcerated in the Australian-run Manus Island Regional Processing Centre from 2013–2016. Killed on Christmas Eve 2016.

When we were told Faysal died we were shocked because Faysal was the only person we were counting on to transform our lives from the refugee camp to a safe world. We don't actually know how he died and the only thing we know is he was sick. He told me so many times that he was sick but I have no idea how he injured his head.

—Salih, the brother of Faysal Ishak Ahmed

Faysal Ishak Ahmed died on Christmas Eve 2016. He had escaped war-torn Sudan after enduring a life full of affliction and adversity. In 2004, his family moved into the Kassab refugee camp in Darfur. At that time, Faysal was thirteen years old.

He survived a tortuous journey from Sudan through Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia. At last, on a rotting boat with ninety other people, Faysal was picked up on the water and taken to Australia's Christmas Island. From there, in September 2013, the Australian government forcibly transferred him to a prison camp on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG). There, he was processed by the authorities and determined to be a refugee.

After three years in the Manus Island offshore prison, Faysal collapsed. His body and mind gave out under the pressures inflicted on him by the Australian detention system. During his time imprisoned on Manus he suffered from extreme stress related to the situation of his family in Sudan and numerous health issues: he would lose consciousness and collapse, and he suffered constant pain in his head and heart. But the prison's medical staff (International Health and Medical Services, or IHMS) misdiagnosed Faysal, ignored and doubted his claims, [End Page 5]


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Yhonnie Scarce, Blood on the wattle, 2013.

Blown glass and perspex, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery.

and mistreated him. He was eventually flown to Australia, where he died in a Brisbane hospital.

Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, who remains incarcerated on Manus Island and knew Faysal well, recounts Faysal's [End Page 6] last words: "They're trying to kill me. If they kill me take care of my son."

The events leading up to Faysal's death are excruciating to contemplate. He came to Australia in search of protection but found himself transferred between countries and prisons, locked within a brutal labyrinth of futile settlement processing and malignant health services. The policies and institutions of a post-colonizing (or neo-colonial)nation-state caused his death.

Australia created these policies and institutions to deter immigration. They are also a form of political grandstanding, meant to reinforce Australia's culture of racial exclusivism. Faysal fled Sudan, managed to reach Australia, and ultimately became entangled in a merciless system designed to degrade and punish him incessantly until he either agreed to deportation or died.

Faysal's story does not begin and end with him alone. Rather, it reaches far back into the depths of Australia's past—back to the nation-state's very origin.

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When the British Empire invaded and colonized Australia and dispossessed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of their lands in 1788, the British claimed the land based on the myth of terra nullius (no one's land). Their lives and cultures destroyed, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were forced from their traditional lands to cattle stations, missions and reserves. The British turned them into indentured servants whose wages, to this day, have not been fully paid. In "I Still Call Australia Home," Aileen Moreton-Robinson explains: "Indigenous people were denied their customary propriety rights under international law and their rights as British subjects of the crown." Britain instructed Captain James Cook to make a treaty with the Aboriginal people but he refused on the basis of the lie that the land was unoccupied. Therefore, Cook's strategy in colonizing the...

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