aua comes your way

The 12th May

For our letter-festival «aua comes your way» it is also important to us that artists get a stage, who deal with political content in their plays. Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere from Belgium, for example, would have been our guests this year with the piece Pleasant Island. It is about the small island of Nauru in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru was once one of the richest countries in the world, but was then mined until the natural resources of the island were exhausted. Today Nauru is one of the poorest countries in the world and internes - like the nearby island of Manus - today on behalf of Australia.

Two of these refugees are Negar Rezvani and Abdul Aziz Muhamat, who have been held in refugee detention centers on the two islands for over six years. On this festival evening, the two were part of the Zoom panel discussion entitled “On isolation & confinement: voices from Nauru and Manus Island”, to which Silke & Hannes invited our subscribers. Negar and Abdul talked about their captivity, the psychological and physical effects of it and their understanding of freedom. And also about who is excluded from the wave of solidarity that triggered Covid-19. Negar even included a poem in the letter of this day with the title «My dear prison officer».

This festival day brought up a lot of questions. Questions about justice and arbitrariness, humanity and personal freedom. And even though auawirleben could not take place in its usual form this year, we’re overjoyed that we found a format to connect people who would otherwise never have met.