IA-Forum:  Would you tell us about your journey, from growing up to seeking asylum and finally getting to Australia?

Barat Ali Batoor:  I was born and grew up in Pakistan and went to Afghanistan for the first time after September 11.  I moved to Afghanistan permanently in 2005 and started working with the International Organization for Migration.  I lived there from 2005 until 2012, when I had to leave after being threatened.  After I left Afghanistan, I went back to Pakistan where the security situation had changed a lot since 2005.  The Hazaras were now the prime target of extremist militant groups, and confined to two small areas of Quetta City where they were marginalized socially, financially, and academically.  I had to leave because of insecurity issues there, and life was becoming very uncertain. 

I decided to seek asylum and to go to Australia. To do so, I paid human smugglers to flee to Thailand.  From there, I went to Indonesia and then to Malaysia. From Malaysia, I took a boat to Indonesia and attempted to go to Australia by boat, but that failed.  After that, I finally gained asylum and resettled in Australia.  Now I live in Melbourne.

IA-Forum:  As a professional photographer, one of your projects was the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. 

Barat Ali Batoor:  Yes, I did that project in 2010.  It is an appalling tradition of warlords and powerful people in Afghanistan who abduct or buy young boys from their poor parents, and then use them as sex slaves or make them dance at parties.  Often, they are put in girls’ costumes and have makeup put on. 

I did this project with support of the Open Society Institute and had an exhibition in Kabul.  Some of the photos were also part of an exhibition in Australia. After that, they were published in the Washington Post in 2012 and other newspapers from Europe; Australia and Canada published them as well. 

IA-Forum:  How do you see the current situation in Afghanistan concerning freedom of the press?

Barat Ali Batoor:  I don’t see a promising situation for freedom of press there.  For instance, there was recently a Facebook page that got a lot of attention because it was very critical of Afghanistan government officials.  It criticized the President and other ministers, including Afghanistan’s Security Advisor.  As a result, the government shut down the page and arrested a few journalists, taking them away for interrogation to determine whether they were running the page.  So freedom of speech is really suppressed by people who are influential or powerful. 

In major cities, where government control is very strong, journalists can’t express their views completely, or freely.  And journalists can’t even go to outlying areas where it is insecure, where the Taliban has control.

IA-Forum:  Let’s go back to your experience as an asylum seeker.  While waiting for asylum, what was a typical day like?

Barat Ali Batoor:  I spent a long time in Indonesia while waiting for asylum.  The first month after I arrived was mostly spent waiting for phone calls from a smuggler or searching for smuggler to take us by boat to Australia.  A typical day at that point was to sleep during the day and wake up during the night, just waiting to be called for an interview by UNHCR.

After the interview, you have to wait several months for the results.  In the event the result is positive, you then wait to hear which country your case will be forwarded to.  Again, you have to wait several months to hear from that embassy.  After that, it will still take another few months until you hear the result of that interview, and then there’s a wait for medical tests, the visa process, and finally the tickets. 

All told, it’s just waiting and doing nothing during the day.  Asylum seekers don’t have work rights and they don’t have the right to attend schools.  Plus, Indonesia is a fairly expensive country, particularly for asylum seekers who have little financial support from home.  These are all limiting factors for them.  So, many asylum seekers might go out in the first few weeks but, shortly after that, it gets really stressful and they stay at home. 

IA-Forum:  When you finally arrived in Australia, did you have any problems adjusting?

Barat Ali Batoor:  No, I didn’t have any problem adjusting because we have a really big community here, especially in Melbourne.  The community’s quite established, with an Afghani bazaar and lots of Afghani shops and restaurants.  Plus, I was aware of Western culture before I arrived because I had been working with westerners for the last 13-14 years.  When I came here, I had many friends, knew many people, and many people knew me through my work.  So it was not really a problem and I adjusted quite quickly.

IA-Forum:  It seems that, by your past photographic projects, such as the Dancing Boys Project, you have an interest in human rights issues.  Do you anticipate any future work in that area?

Barat Ali Batoor:  I do have plans to try to take some projects revolving around human rights issues, especially with children.  But I’m just waiting for the right time to start a project because I’m in a new country, still in a transition period and there are lots of competing projects.  I will definitely come back to projects that I have left incomplete and ones I had an idea to start with but couldn’t.

IA-Forum:  How did your journey as an asylum seeker affect your perception of asylum seekers?

Barat Ali Batoor:  I had a bit of an idea beforehand that these types of journeys are difficult.  I had experienced crossing borders illegally when I was in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Hazaras are usually treated very badly on these borders.  So I had experienced small border crossings, but my journey from Pakistan to Australia was a completely different experience.  I knew people who took the same journey to Australia and some of them drowned. Still, their families wait and hope that one day they will return even though they know that their boats were lost at sea and they might not come back again. 

Personally, I learned that the journey was much more difficult than I thought and far more complicated, especially if you can’t speak other languages needed to communicate well over the course of it.  If you haven’t traveled before, it is way more difficult and, of course, human smugglers are not always very good people.  While some of them are good, others treat people very inhumanely. 

IA-Forum:  What would you like others to take from your experience, especially policymakers, about asylum seekers?

Barat Ali Batoor: Unless someone is an economic migrant, nobody wants to leave their homeland if there is peace in their country, if they have safety and security.  What the policymakers can try their best to do is to help bring peace to those areas that are producing asylum seekers and refugees.  That can be a very big help for these people. 

Those who leave countries as a result of insecurity and seek asylum should be treated humanely and be given asylum rather than tortured psychologically.  For example, there are around 30,000 people with Bridging visa here in Australia.  They weren’t able to get work rights here until a few months ago when work laws were relaxed by the government.  They also have been limited in their rights for education since those same people have not been able to afford tuition fees.  Plus, they are not allowed to reunite with their families.  So they have been tortured psychologically. 

These people have gone through a lot in their own countries and they have escaped persecution so they should not be persecuted like this.  I think it could be termed modern persecution, by psychological means.  So I think policies should be a little bit softer towards these people who are vulnerable and need helping hands.