Abdul Aziz Muhamat, the 2019 Martin Ennals Award Laureate, is a compelling and tireless advocate for refugee rights. He has been trapped in Australia’s offshore immigration system on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, since October 2013, along with hundreds of other refugees and asylum seekers. After fleeing the conflict in his homeland Sudan - he was intercepted by Australian authorities who forcibly transferred him into the country’s offshore immigration system at the Lombrum naval base, on Manus Island. He remains there, despite having been  granted refugee status in 2015.

For two years, he sent over 4000 voice messages to the journalist Michael Green detailing his experience in detention for the multi award-winning podcast, The Messenger. He has been  involved in various kinds of peaceful resistance, including letter writing to politicians, a mass hunger strike (for which he and dozens of others were arrested and held in PNG police and prison cells for up to four weeks without charge in January 2015), and various periods of non-cooperation and peaceful and silent protest.