TOKYO-2017 Editorial / Political

Beaten Asylum Seeker

  • Prize
    Bronze in Editorial/Political
  • Photographer
    Brian Cassey

“Beaten Assylum Seeker” Iraqi Abdullatif Almoftaji was just seventeen when he was detained at Australia’s borders when trying to enter by boat. He spent four years years in detention on Manus Island PNG with hundreds of others from his country, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan,Ethiopia etc. He was beaten and arrested after he went on a drunken 'bender' in Lorengau, the capital of Manus Island PNG. I found him locked in the Lorengau police cell dressed in only shorts and showing the evidence of his beating. I made this image Abdullahtif through a hole in the cell wire. Soon after he was deported back to Iraq by the Australian government where he faces a distinctly uncertain and unsafe future.

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