‘They are torturing us. We cannot breathe’: A Kurdish refugee’s tweets and a nation damned

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In Australia, many refugees like Mostafa Azimitabar are still deemed unworthy of their humanity and what’s theirs under international law.

Mostafa Azimitabar speaks outside the Federal Court in Melbourne (Image: AAP/Joel Carrett)

The handful of tweets, all dated and neatly set out in one paragraph in the 87-page judgment, read like a chilling indictment of the nation.

The first warns of the lack of open air: “There’s not any outdoor space for breathing … We have been locked up in hotels … No trees, no breath”. This same disquiet manifests again two weeks later: “There’s no outdoor space for breathing here”, the tweet says. “We need help please…”

Over the months that follow, the author’s burgeoning mental anguish folds into physical collapse: “They have taken the sky away from us”, one tweet says; “our bodies are getting weaker day by day”, says another. “[We] are deprived of sunlight.”