Transcript
AM: I've never known any body on a hunger strike before, he hasn't eaten anything for about seven days. He's already very thin, already very unwell, and my understanding is that normally it can take many months, but because he's already in such poor physical condition it probably won't take very long for him to die. Life in the camps is already terrible. He's already being kept in isolation compound because whenever he's in the regular compound he is being regularly assaulted and now he's being told by Papua New guinea immigration that he has to move back into the regular detention centre population, which will again result , in him being assaulted. And he's had enough, he just wants to die.
BRD: And i take it, being part of this campaign you're suggesting that his talent and his skills could actual be of benefit to Australia?
AM: Oh absolutely, yeah. Many of these men- the ones on Manus or the families on Nauru would be able to contribute to Australian society. It's well documented that immigration is not a bad thing, it's a good thing and this young man has got a very wry way of looking at the world and he's got a perspective that not many other people do considering where he's come from and what he's seen and you know getting him here and getting into an art school and getting him working as a cartoonist is in everybody's best interests.
BRD: Has he told you anything about the nature of his confinement? I've read that he's actually being watched very closely at the moment.
AM: He has been on suicide watch and a lot of them are and that's the main thing that camps do I think, is that they stop people from killing themselves because that looks bad in the newspapers. He has COD, he does a lot of handwashing to the point of making himself bleed. We've talked a lot about how, you know, guards and asylum seekers touch his stuff because it drives him crazy because he has a phobia about germs and if you have a phobia of germs to be in a place like that would be a hell. But i also understand that he's got PTSD and there's great reams of letters from various health professionals and psychologists that he's got a long list of things that are wrong with him, like again, most of the men in Manus. When we talk he's usually always lucid, he's usually always articulate. I mean he's pretty clear about this hunger strike, you know in the last eight days he's had a glass of water and two cups of tea.
That's The Guardian cartoonist Andrew Marlton.
