By CASEY NEILL
A DANDENONG refugee hopes images of his treacherous journey to freedom will change public opinion on asylum seekers.
Barat Ali Batoor will have an audience of more than 30,000 people when he speaks at the Sydney Opera House on 26 April for ideas festival TEDxSydney.
“My responsibility is to give the actual story to educate people about asylum seekers and their path and their plight,” he said.
The 30-year-old last year won two Walkley Awards for excellence in photojournalism, and works as a community guide with AMES, helping other people to settle.
“I’ll be speaking about the situation of the Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan and about my journey from Afghanistan to Australia,” he said.
“The photos will be about the targeted killings that are happening in Pakistan.
“The Hazaras there are being targeted. Ethnic cleansing is happening there.
“The rest are from my journey, to show how terrible, how risky, how dangerous this journey is.
“If I’m successful to educate people then the people can decide.
“They can put influence or put pressure on the government.
“We should really tell the people who we are and what is happening to us.”
Mr Batoor said people were paying “a big amount of money to take a risky journey”.
He’s captured visually just how dangerous the journey is and the treatment asylum seekers receive at the end.
“We are really suffering,” he said.
“The way we are treated is not fair. We are human beings.
“We should not be made a political football.”
Mr Batoor left behind his mother and siblings to make his journey to Australia.
“We could only afford one person,” he said.
“It is a difficult situation because I left my family in a city where you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
“There could be a suicide attack any time. If they are leaving their home in the morning, no-one is sure if they’re going to come back in the evening.
“I tried to come to Australia but my boat leaked and we went back to Indonesia. We were about to sink.”
He made it to Darwin through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and spent a week there before moving to Dandenong.
“It is very good and I really don’t feel strange at all since I got here because there’s a big community of our people from Afghanistan,” he said.
“It feels like home and a very peaceful environment.
“I’m very happy here, I love it.”
