Wednesday 10 December 2003 - Release No. 6
Human Rights Radio Award for ‘A place you cannot imagine’
An evocative and hauntingly produced piece of radio by ABC Radio National’s Lea Redfern and Phillip Ulman titled ‘The place you cannot imagine: a family and detention in Australia’ has won this year’s Human Rights Radio Award.
Judges said the entries in this category showcased excellent research, imagination and presentation and covered a range of styles and subjects from news pieces on the ‘Pacific Solution’ to documentaries on prisoners, mental illness and Aboriginal spirituality.
The place you cannot imagine: a family and detention in Australia is a half-hour documentary which was first broadcast on Street Stories on ABC Radio National. It follows the story of Gyzele Osmani, an Albanian woman who fled Kosovo in 1999 with her husband and five young children. They came to Australia but were placed in Port Hedland detention centre after refusing to return to East Kosovo, which they believed was still unsafe for them.
According to the judges, it is a humanising story that ‘avoids the trap of stereotyping by examining the life of this one woman and her family’. It is the story of a mother watching her children grow up behind bars, with little control over their education, safety and health care.
The judges were impressed not only with the themes in the story, but also by the quality of the radio craft which was displayed in telling that story.
The judges also highly commended a series of radio segments looking at the sustainability of Aboriginal communities in remote Australia. Produced by Adrian Shaw and Leesa Satour, ‘Our Place: Telephones in Remote Communities’ was broadcast on over 160 Indigenous radio stations.
The judges said that these segments were ‘a great example of community radio’, ‘an excellent forum to discuss some very practical issue facing Indigenous communities’ and ‘demonstrate that you can achieve a lot without lots of funding and resources’.
Last updated 21 June 2004.
