Behrouz Boochani
Iranian-Kurdish journalist, human rights defender, poet and film producer
Behrouz Boochani (Kurdish: بێێڕوز بووچانی; born 23 July 1983) is an Iranian Kurdish journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer living in New Zealand. He was held in the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea from 2013 until its closure in 2017. He remained on the island before being moved to Port Moresby along with the other detainees around September 2019. On 14 November 2019 he arrived in Christchurch on a one-month visa, to speak at a special event organised by WORD Christchurch on 29 November, as well as other speaking events. In December 2019, his one-month visa to New Zealand expired and he remained on an expired visa until being granted refugee status in July 2020, at which time he became a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury.
Boochani is the co-director, along with Iranian film maker Arash Kamali Sarvestani, of the documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, has published numerous articles in leading media internationally about the plight of refugees held by the Australian government on Manus Island, and has won several awards.
His memoir, No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction in January 2019. The book was tapped out on a mobile phone in a series of single messages over time and translated from Persian into English by Omid Tofighian.
After the November 2022 publication of his second collection of writings, Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani, Boochani visited Australia for the first time to promote the book in December 2022.
Life
In Iran
Boochani was born in Ilam, Iran in 1983.
“Behrouz Boochani” enters the record as iranian-Kurdish journalist, human rights defender, poet and film producer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Behrouz, Boochani and Iranian-Kurdish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Behrouz Boochani” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Behrouz, Boochani and Iranian-Kurdish provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29452528. VIAF identifies the subject as 9008155286631887180000. The Library of Congress control number is no2018177408. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2013, 2017 and 2019.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Behrouz Boochani”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Behrouz Boochani primary sources, Behrouz Boochani archive and Behrouz research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Behrouz Boochani”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Behrouz Boochani” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.