Craig Foster needed to see a psychiatrist before he visited refugees and asylum seekers in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The session was not so much for his own benefit but to coach him on how to speak to vulnerable people who had gone through extreme hardship with many suffering from mental health problems. “[It was] to avoid giving hope, making promises which could result in self harm,” Foster, a former Socceroos captain and now human rights activist, said. “That’s the reality. I was told that, despite my best efforts, someone could take their life during our interaction or afterwards.” Foster has called on the world’s sporting community to come together to help find homes for the hundreds of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru who have been prevented from entering Australia and are yet to be resettled. “Boxing, cricket, football can stand with our brothers and sisters offshore and call for their passage to safety and resettlement away from the dangerous situation they’re in,” said Foster, who is part of the #GameOver movement using sport to fight for human rights. “And not only can we, but we must. They’re relying on us. That’s what sport is about. It has the power to change the world, but only if we accept that human rights are the foundation of solidarity and the brother and sisterhood that comes as an obligation with our participation, and particularly for former players like myself, our success.” Australia had kept refugees and asylum seekers at the offshore Manus Island Detention Centre and Nauru. The Manus Island camp officially closed in October 2017 and many of the detainees were forcibly removed to locations in nearby Lorengau. The detainees have been living in poor conditions over the past few years, with several on Manus Island having either committed suicide or been killed. “Australia has detained a generation of asylum seekers for almost seven years during a dark period of argumentation and political stasis over immigration policy and refugee rights,” said Foster. “Like many Australians, I believe the treatment of them is abhorrent to the concept of shared humanity, of human rights and of simple compassion for others which must surely bind the human race. “Australia has forgotten there are real, living and breathing human beings suffering every day while the impasse persists. There’s been so much misinformation in recent decades that I went to see for myself, to cut through the agendas and see the state they’re in. “Unsurprisingly, I found utter devastation. People with extremely serious psychological trauma, medicated just to see another day through. Others with scars on their arms from self harm and suicide attempts. As a former sportsman, living in a world of privilege and notoriety, it was extremely confronting, and one can never unsee the things that I saw, and heard.” Foster said he was committed to raising awareness of the refugees’ plight, saying Australia is a nation of immigrants – the only difference between Australians and the refugees being the form of transport used. Refugee Pakistani MMA fighter Ezatullah Kakar battling for Manus survivors after years living amid death and despair “Those who’ve survived the living hell are actually incredibly strong people,” said Foster. “Despite everything they’ve endured, they demonstrate an extraordinary will to live, to see their families again, to rebuild their lives. I was in awe of their strength, not to mention the brilliance of the artists, musicians, poets and writers that I met. Importantly, I also found many athletes and sportspeople.” Among the athletes who are seeking new lives is Ezatullah Kakar, a Pakistani kick-boxing champion now in the Philippines looking to pursue a mixed martial arts career and cricketer Samad. Most of the refugees would play football when they were allowed out of the camps, and Foster is hoping the sporting powers can come together to help give them new lives. “In football, we don’t fear the other, they’re our teammates, our opponents, our community and our game should be perfectly comfortable calling for the human rights of the refugees to be upheld,” said Foster. “Too often, human rights are seen as ‘political’ but they are not, though they may be heavily ‘politicised’. There is a fundamental difference. “Human rights exists for us all above the whim of governments, not by their grace. When calling for humane, appropriate treatment of other humans is seen as too difficult, too fraught with commercial interests, too entangled with political agendas, the human race has lost our way.”