Exclusive: From detention centre escapee and cross-continental fugitive to a student in Canada with a promising future. Jaivet Ealom shares his story publicly for the first time | KnottMatthew
Ealom fled Myanmar in mid-2013, a time of heightened violence between the country's Buddhist majority and the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority whose members are denied citizenship rights. "I saw everything you can see in a conflict zone," he says.
"My cousins were grabbed and sent to jail with no trial. They were shooting people in the back trying to cross the river. I decided to get out while I could." He made his way to a refugee camp in Jakarta, but quickly realised that he was likely to languish there for years. So he paid to board a boat of asylum seekers bound for Australia. His timing was terrible. While on the voyage, then-prime minister Kevin Rudd announced that no asylum seeker who arrived by boat without a visa would ever be resettled in Australia.After six months on Christmas Island, Ealom was sent to the Manus Regional Processing Centre, which he calls a prison. He describes his experience in detention as "systematically designed torture". Ealom was only 21 when he arrived in Manus, and had braces on his teeth that went unadjusted for years. "I was never given a chance to see a dentist," he says. "My mouth was bleeding constantly." He was beaten up during riots that broke out between Papua New Guinean locals and the detained asylum seekers. He was also held in solitary confinement for weeks after being caught with a mobile phone and SIM card. "It felt like psychological warfare," he says. "The guards knew your name but they would call you by your number. We were treated like animals." Ealom was one of an estimated 60 asylum seekers who did not participate in the initial refugee assessment process. At the time, the Australian government's official stance was that all refugees would be resettled in PNG, a prospect many asylum seekers considered unsafe and undesirable. Because of his status - known as "negative without assessment" - Ealom had no hope of being accepted into the US under the Australia-US resenttlement deal. "I realised I had to take things into my own hands and do something," he says. "I was stateless, I didn't have any documentation. I could see things were just going to get worse."Ealom says his escape in May 2017 was the culmination of a year's worth of planning and preparation. Ealom scraped together enough money for a plane ticket by exchanging rationed cigarettes for local currency. He also carefully studied the movements of staff members flying in and out of the island, using these patterns to help determine the safest time to attempt to leave. Stephen Watt, a refugee advocate in Toronto who has become friends with Ealom, says he has specific personality traits that allowed him to get off the island. "Jaivet is very good at figuring out how systems work and finding where the cracks are," Watt says. "He can see opportunities that other people can't."which he had watched as teenager in Myanmar. It tells the story of prisoners on death row in Illinois who use an underground tunnel to escape jail.He also learnt from the experience of Loghman Sawari, an asylum seeker who used fake documents to travel from Papua New Guinea to Fiji in February 2017. He claimed asylum there but was sent back to PNG and charged with passport forgery, which carried a jail term of up to six months and hefty fine. Ealom says that three people helped him escape, two workers at the detention centre and an Australian asylum seeker advocate. One of the detention centre workers secretly transported him to the Manus airport in his car. Iranian refugee Loghman Sawari, pictured in 2017, was arrested and sent back to PNG before charges against him were withdrawn."There were people who were against the system, who were against what was going on," he says.He has asked for them not to be identified to protect them from any reprisals.Ealom chose to board a flight to Port Moresby that was commonly used by interpreters from different ethnic backgrounds. This allowed him to blend in with the other passengers - as did his new clothes and sunglasses. "I put my earphones, with no sound playing, in so no one-would talk to me," he recalls. "My heart was beating so fast."Ealom's friend, Amir Sahragard, an Iranian asylum seeker who was also detained on Manus Island, noticed that he had gone missing at this time. But he didn't think much of it at first. Ealom's friends say he is good at examining systems and identifying weaknesses. He has had plenty of experience with that."I thought he must have gone into town, that he might come back soon," he says. But as time passed, he became increasingly worried. "Jaivet disappeared, he deactivated his Facebook and Instagram," Sahragard says. "I thought something bad might have happened to him."After a couple of months in Port Moresby, Ealom moved on to the Solomon Islands where he believed he would be safer. He lived in Honiara for several months at the home of a non-profit worker who allowed him to stay rent-free. As part of a strategy to obtain citizenhip, Ealom learnt to speak the local Pjin language and took up chewing betel nuts, a popular local practice that stains your teeth red. This helped him fool the authorities into thinking he was a local and to hand him a Solomon passport. "I worked out that the Solomon Islands was a Commonwealth country and you can get in other Commonwealth countries without a visa," he says. "I did some digging and discovered you can fly to Canada with an Electronic Travel Authorisation." He had never considered going to Canada, and didn't know anybody there. But he booked a flight to Toronto. To get there, he had to fly first through Fiji, where immigration authorities suspected him of travelling illegally. He was detained there for two days, but he eventually managed to talk his way onto a flight to Hong Kong."The airline staff were not convinced. They wanted to know why I was flying so far without any luggage. They wanted to know how much money I had." The airline staff eventually allowed him onto the plane, but he had no idea what would await him in Toronto. "I was worried they would put me straight on a plane and I'd never see the other side of the airport." In Canada, he tried a different tactic. He told the immigration official his story and confessed to travelling on a fake passport."He was so shocked by my story and how far I had come. He went out and bought me Subway with his own money. It was completely the opposite experience I'd had with Australia. Finally, I saw light at the end of the tunnel."Ealom arrived in Toronto in December, when it can be as cold as minus 30 degrees. He had no winter clothes and only about $50 to his name.He says he received an expedited hearing from the Canadian Refugee Board, which granted him refugee status after a 40-minute interview. When Ealom told Amir Sahragard that he was living in Canada, his friend thought he was joking. "It's unbelievable," he says. "He was the only one who ever escaped from there and made it out."Credit:The friends were reunited in November when Sahragard was resettled in Toronto under Canada's unique private refugee sponsorship program. Ealom, who studied industrial chemistry in Myanmar, had originally been drawn to the hard sciences. But his experience in immigration detention sparked an interest in social justice. In 2018, he enrolled to study political science and economics at the University of Toronto and will complete his degree this year. He has become a prominent spokesmen for the Rohingya community in Canada and works at a company that provides software to non-profit organisations. He is hopeful that a documentary about his journey,Ealom has generally avoided talking about his experiences on Manus to Canadians, who usually have little knowledge of Australia's offshore detention policies. "Nobody outside of Manus will ever be able to grasp the depth of it so I find it better not to tell," he says. Ealom still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in immigration detention. The sound of sirens or an unexpected knock of the door - reminders of his life on Manus - make him panic. But feels safe in Toronto, and has hope for the future. "In Manus, I thought there was nothing good in the world," he says. "When I arrived in Canada, I felt human again." Friend Stephen Watt says he is astounded at Ealom's successful integration into Canadian life and how he has thrived in his work and his study.
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