Hamed’s father in Iran this week …
Alice Krupa worked on Manus Island in 2015-2016. She met Hamed Shamshiripour, a man who died 10 days ago after enduring four years of engineered cruelty at the hands of the Australian Government, and Papua New Guinean authorities. Here, she reveals details about life on Manus, and the daily outrages forced on detainees.
I commenced as a Broadspectrum case manager at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (MIRPC) in December 2015. At the time I had been a social worker for seven years, working in the Victorian mental health and out of home care systems.
Prior to Manus I had never worked for a service provider that had in place a plan to systematically break down a group of vulnerable people. I had never worked under a government department with a strategy to impede access to appropriate medical care. I had never witnessed in my workplace repeated and intentional disregard for basic human rights and international law.
It was in this environment that a young Iranian asylum seeker, Hamed Shamshiripour, became acutely mentally unwell. It was under this strategy that he was denied appropriate treatment, leading to his death near the grounds of a Lorengau primary school …
• SBS: VR film takes you inside the devastating reality of life on Manus Island “In Sudan they killed us physically, but here they’re killing us mentally, which is worse.”
New Matilda
