CNN, February 1, 2019.
A refugee currently held in a detention camp in Papua New Guinea has won two of Australia's richest literary prizes, netting him 125,000 Australian dollars (approximately $90,000).
Winner Behrouz Boochani could not attend Thursday's ceremony for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, where he took the Victorian Prize for Literature -- the country's most lucrative prize -- and the Non-Fiction Prize.
Australia detained the Kurdish-Iranian journalist on the island of Manus in 2013 for attempting to enter Australia without a valid visa.
Boochani is among 600 refugees who remain in camps on the island despite Australia having closed its "regional processing center" there in 2017.
