Aziz revealed the ‘inhumane’ conditions on Manus through the Guardian’s Messenger podcast

A Sudanese refugee activist who spent four years in an Australian detention centre has won an international human rights prize for exposing “the very cruel asylum seeker policy of the Australian government”.

Abdul Aziz Muhamat was named the winner of the Martin Ennals award 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday.

Aziz is a Zaghawa man from the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2013, fleeing the violence of his homeland – a country still beset by brutal civil conflict, famine and drought – Aziz flew to Indonesia, where he boarded a boat bound for Australia.

Meet the Messenger of Manus, one man trapped in Australia's offshore processing regime Read more

After six days at sea, he made it. But, from Christmas Island, Aziz was sent to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. He revealed the conditions of the camp through the podcast The Messenger, which was co-produced by Behind the Wire and Wheeler Centre and published by the Guardian in 2017.

The Messenger was created from more than 3,500 brief WhatsApp messages sent from detention of Aziz telling his story to journalist Michael Green. It documents Aziz’s flight from a war-riven homeland, the perils of his journey by boat, the deterioration and deaths of friends on Manus, and the confusion and frustration at living in detention. It was named one of 2017’s three grand award winners at the New York festival’s International Radio Program awards.

In a statement accepting the Martin Ennals award, Aziz said: “This award sheds light on the very cruel refugee policy of the Australian government.

Play Video 2:17 ‘The cage made me strong’: Manus Island detainee Abdul Aziz Muhamat wins human rights award – video

“It’s not easy to be in a place where you fight for your rights but unfortunately there are so many boundaries on the road and so many walls you have to jump every day.”

He said he left a war behind in Darfur but in seeking asylum in Australia, a “western democratic country that believed in democracy and justice”, he found himself “locked up like an animal in a cage”.

He said he’d been harassed, jailed and labelled a troublemaker during his five years in detention.

“The conditions that we are living there are absolutely indescribable ... inhumane and cruel,” Aziz told reporters in Geneva before Wednesday’s award ceremony.

“We have been treated very badly, [worse] than an animal,” he said, pointing out that refugee residents of the camps are referred to only with a number.

“My number is QNK002, that’s how I’m known to the system.”

Aziz travelled to Geneva to accept the award, and will return to Manus Island.

‘Same day – or different day – same shit. But still alive’ – the Messenger podcast Read more

Brian Dooley, of Human Rights First, one of the award’s jury members, said migrant rights were under attack across the world.

“Defending those rights is increasingly difficult and dangerous,” he said. “Aziz is a modern-day human rights defender fighting for justice in one of the harshest places in the world.”

The UN high commission for refugees, in a statement praising Aziz’s advocacy work, said it “continues to urge that solutions be found for all refugees and asylum seekers under Australia’s offshore processing in Papua New Guinea and Nauru as a matter of urgency”.

The Manus Island detention centre was closed in November 2017 when inmates were transferred to new accommodation in Lorengau.