Curtin University will host an event with an Iranian asylum seeker and public speaker this week.
Writer, poet and human rights activist Arad Nik fled Iran after becoming the target of Iranian security forces.
He was sentenced to more than five years in prison for organising a human rights education program and writing two books while working at a university in his home country.
Mr Nik fled Iran in 2012 and spent 15 months in detention centres on Christmas Island and in the northwest of Western Australia.
He will share his story through writing and poetry.
Mr Nik was from the Ahwazi Arabic minority in Iran and said there had been a long history of fighting for human rights, jobs and education for his people.
“My poetry and writings were about Ahwazi Arabic people, explaining them and their culture to other Iranian people, to connect the different cultures together and foster respect,” he said.
‘My two books that were seized were “I am an Arab woman” and “Conversations between cultures’.
“They were written during a time of greater freedoms in Iran but with a presidential change they were seen as too Arabic-orientated and were not allowed to be published.”
Mr Nik said his bookshop was raided and shut down around the same time.
The public event will be at the John Curtin Gallery on March 22 between 12.30pm and 1.30pm.
Curtin University will also run an exhibition by internationally renowned artist John Akomfrah in its gallery showing humanity’s relationship with the sea, its life forms and migration.
The exhibition will run until April 30.
