Abstract
Mandatory and indefinite detention in Australia dates back to 1992 when it was introduced by Labour Prime Minister Paul Keating; the policy remains in place and has been modified by subsequent Labour and Liberal governments. The unprecedented and uncanny interdependence between the border—industrial complex—which includes the detention industry—and Federal election campaigns has marked a particularly brutal phase in Australia’s recent immigration history. The weaponisation of time is a perverse feature of this horrific period; time as an instrument of torture is key to Australian border violence and synonymous with indefinite detention. Combining lived reality (Behrouz Boochani) and conceptualised commentary (Omid Tofighian) this chapter documents the torturous ways in which time is weaponised through this regime.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
G4S term themselves as “the world’s leading integrated security company. We offer a broad range of security services delivered on a single, multi-service or integrated basis” (G4S, n.d., https://www.g4s.com/en-gb/who-we-are). G4S was responsible for operating the Manus Island (and Nauru) detention centre during the early period when Reza Barati was killed during unrest in Manus on 14th February 2014. This generic description obscures the companies role in extraterritorial/extrajudicial sites, which has involved numerous instances of human rights abuses in which the company has been implicated; examples include Manus, Nauru, Palestine and in Guantanamo Bay. See Boochani (2019a).
- 2.
The number of deaths related just to Manus and Nauru has now reached fourteen. However, this figure does not account for people who died after being deported.
- 3.
“Coloniality” (sometimes phrased “coloniality/modernity”) is a concept that describes colonialism not as an event but as a pervasive structure and perpetual process. Aníbal Quijano introduced the term and it was developed further by other decolonial thinkers.
References
Boochani, B., 2018a. No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison. Translated by O. Tofighian, with translator’s note and essay. Sydney: Picador.
Boochani, B., 2018b. Manus Prison Theory. The Saturday Paper. Translated by O. Tofighian. 11–17 August.
Boochani, B., 2019a. The Paladin Scandal Is Just a Drop in the Ocean of Corruption on Manus and Nauru. The Guardian. Translated by O. Tofighian. 27 February.
Boochani, B., 2019b. How many more people must die on Manus before Australia ends indefinite dentention. The Guardian. Translated by O. Tofighian. 3 June.
Boochani, B., 2019c. The Truth About Self-Harm in Offshore Detention. The Saturday Paper. Translated by O. Tofighian. 7 September.
Elphick, J., 2019. Cinematic Poetics and Reclaiming History: Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time as Legacy. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 18, pp. 199–204. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.18.
Galbraith, J., 2019. A Reflection on Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 18, pp. 193–198. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.17.
Giannacopoulos, M. and C. Loughnan, 2020. ‘Closure’ at Manus Island and Carceral Expansion in the Open Air Prison. Globalizations 17 no. 7, pp. 1118–1135. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2019.1679549.
G4S, n.d. Who We Are [Online]. Available at: https://www.g4s.com/en-gb/who-we-are. Accessed 15 August 2020.
Kamali Sarvestani, A., 2019. Looking for Chauka. Translated by O. Tofighian, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 18, pp. 188–192. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.16.
Olubas, B., 2019. “Where We Are Is Too Hard”: Refugee Writing and the Australian Border as Literary Interface. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 19, no. 2.
Rooney, M. N., 2018. The Chauka Bird and Morality on Our Manus Island Home. The Conversation. 2 February.
Schüssler Fiorenza, E., 1992. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon.
Schüssler Fiorenza, E., 2001. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Tofighian, O., 2018. Translator’s Tale: A Window to the Mountains. In B. Boochani, 2018. No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison. Translated from Farsi by O. Tofighian, with translator’s note and essay. Sydney: Picador. pp. xiii–xxxvi.
Tofighian, O., 2019a. Displacement, Exile and Incarceration Commuted into Cinematic Vision. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 18, pp. 91–106. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.07.
Tofighian, O., 2019b. In Conversation with Omid Tofighian. Vertigo. 20 October.
Tofighian, O., 2020. Introducing Manus Prison Theory: Knowing Border Violence. Globalizations 17, no. 7, pp. 1138–1156. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1713547.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tofighian, O., Boochani, B. (2021). The Weaponisation of Time: Indefinite Detention as Torture. In: Bhatia, M., Canning, V. (eds) Stealing Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69897-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69897-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69896-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69897-3
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)