by RICHARD PHILLIPS
Chasing Asylum
Manus Island and Nauru
Chasing Asylum, directed by Eva Orner; edited by Annabelle Johnston
Los Angeles-based, Australian-born filmmaker Eva Orner is the recipient of numerous documentary prizes, including for Taxi to the Dark Side, which won an Academy Award for the Best Documentary Feature in 2008. The film is a detailed examination of the Bush administration’s use of torture, rendition and other illegal measures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay following the 9/11 terror attacks.
Chasing Asylum, her latest feature, is a forceful and harrowing exposure of Australia’s cruel and criminal asylum-seeker detention policies. Currently in limited release in local cinemas, it is the first time footage from inside the offshore detention centres has been screened in Australia.
Orner’s documentary, which is skilfully edited by Annabelle Johnson, unmasks the lies of consecutive Liberal-National and Labor governments, lifting the official veil of secrecy on the terrible human consequences of the so-called “offshore processing” program.
Under current law, asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat are immediately transferred to detention centres located on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island or the Republic of Nauru in the remote southwest Pacific. The men, women and children are imprisoned indefinitely, not for any “crime,” but for simply exercising their internationally-recognised legal right to seek asylum.
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