Mehdi is free.
After nearly nine years in Australia’s immigration detention system, Mehdi Ali has flown out of the country to be resettled in the US.
Mehdi – who this year became the public face of, and a powerful advocate for, the refugees and asylum seekers detained in Melbourne’s Park Hotel – arrived in Australia as a 15-year-old seeking sanctuary.
A member of Iran’s routinely persecuted Ahwazi Arab minority, he was sent to Australia by his family, arriving by boat with his cousin, then 16-year-old Adnan Choopani, in 2013.
Tonight I am free and leaving Australia to start my life in the United States of America. But I won't be happy until all my friends are get released from detention. It's not freedom until we are all free. Thank you all for your support.
— Mehdi Ali (@MehdiAli98) March 3, 2022
Mehdi was sent to Australia’s detention centre on Nauru, an experience that was, in his words, “a complete trauma”. He watched, helpless to intercede, as a fellow refugee burnt himself to death, he was beaten by guards employed to protect him; and jailed without charge. The school he went to, the one light in a dark existence, was suddenly shuttered.
The Nauru files, internal working documents from the Nauru detention centre published by Guardian Australia in 2016, revealed widespread abuse of children in detention. Children were sexually assaulted, beaten, abused and suffered catastrophic mental health effects, leading to depression, suicide attempts and the rarely seen resignation syndrome.
“In our first year detained in the camp on Nauru, I remember most of the asylum seekers were completely depressed,” Mehdi wrote in the days before he left Australia. “With my own eyes I witnessed the suicide of one soul destroyed by this island. Death by self-immolation was the worst scene I had watched in my life. This was the new reality for us on Nauru. We were there, my cousin and I, for six years.”
Late in 2014 Mehdi and Choopani’s claim for refugee protection was formally recognised. They had a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country and could not legally be returned there. Australia was legally obliged to protect them.
The cousins were brought to Australia under the short-lived medevac laws in 2019 and spent more than two years in detention, shuttled – sometimes in handcuffs – between Brisbane and Melbourne. The pair were, they were regularly told, in the queue for resettlement in the US but it was a queue that, to them, never appeared to move, and carried no guarantee it ever would.
Mehdi watched as boatmates he arrived in Australia alongside left detention to begin lives, careers and families in Australia. He watched, too, while others succumbed to despair and self-harm. He taught himself guitar, he wrote, and he campaigned for the release of all of those detained.
He was told late last month he would be leaving for the US. With Choopani, he decided, in his words “to leave quietly”. He had seen other refugees promised resettlement or release pack their belongings and leave for the airport, only to return, devastated, a few hours later
“The closer I get to the flight, the more scared and anxious I feel, but all of this turns into hope when I imagine calling and telling my family that I am finally free, and seeing their smiling faces,” he told Guardian Australia.
“We fought for our lives. We suffered and we endured and we waited and we are still waiting. But the Australian government’s crimes against refugees over the past decade are unforgivable, and to remain silent in the face of this oppression is unacceptable.”
He marked nine birthdays in detention – the crucial, formative years from 15 to 24.
His last birthday in detention was notable for the absurdity of sharing his detention hotel with the world’s No 1 tennis player, Novak Djokovic. Djokovic’s handful of days in detention exposed the plight of refugees and asylum seekers who had spent years trapped in Australia’s detention regime.
“The birthdays,” Mehdi told the Guardian that day, “are the saddest days. They are supposed to be the happiest but, during my time in detention, they are always the heaviest days. I spend the whole day thinking about all the years I’ve lost.”
Mehdi begins a new life in America today.
He will be one of the last to be resettled under Australia’s refugee swap scheme with the US.
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
