‘Inhumane’: Asylum seekers on Nauru claim mistreatment, but Adeang disagrees

Around 100 asylum seekers are being held again in Australia’s offshore processing centre in NauruLast June, that number dropped to zero.

Mohammad Bashir Anjum from Pakistan was placed at the Regional Processing Centre 1 (RPC1).

“They don’t treat us very well,” said Anum, who has lived there since February.

“There is no humanity, they are just treated like animals.”

Anjam travelled by boat from Indonesia to Broome in northwestern Australia and eventually to Nauru.

He said he had fled violence in his home country twice, including torture and kidnapping; once in 2013 and again in 2021 when he returned to Pakistan from Brisbane in the hope that conditions had improved.

Anjam said he did not know how long he would be kept on Nauru, but immigration officials told him it could be “many years.”

He said there was a lack of care from staff and a lack of medical care.

He asked his GP three times to refer him to an ophthalmologist but received no treatment.

“There is only one general practitioner who only treats fever or common illnesses; but if it is a more difficult illness, such as eye problems, ear problems, or dental problems, there is no specialist and no one can see the patient.”

He said mental health professionals offered no help — manipulated by “actors” pretending to be professionals — asking him to repeat his story over and over again.

“If you ask me the same story every day, it’s hard for me, I feel uncomfortable.

“They didn’t write. They didn’t record our stories.”

Jana Favero of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the organisation was again hearing similar reports of inadequate healthcare.

“Sometimes only nurses were available, but no doctors; we tried to verify all these reports by asking the departmental administration, but it was impossible to obtain any information,” said Favero, head of system change.

George Newhouse, a lawyer with the National Justice Project, said his organization is currently working on 40 cases involving refugees or asylum seekers who have suffered mental or physical harm while living on Nauru.

“We have come across many examples of patients with cancer or other serious illnesses not receiving appropriate treatment.”

Nauru President David Adeang It means that hundreds, if not thousands, of people are looking after the welfare of asylum seekers in RPC1.

“We certainly don’t have the medical facilities that others would expect, but we know that if there are cases that need to be treated overseas, we will send them overseas,” he said at a rare news conference outside his office on Nauru, requiring reporters’ questions to be approved in advance.

No reputation damage

Adeang said he did not believe the processing centre in the region had caused damage to Nauru’s reputation.

“I think it did a lot for Nauru – it solved all our unemployment problems at one point.

“But I do think journalists need to be fairer and more balanced. I know of only one balanced report out of hundreds, maybe thousands, of reports on the RPC.

“I think the problem is not with the RPC but perhaps the attitude of some journalists.”

Nauru is notoriously hostile to journalists. In 2018, police detained TVNZ reporter Barbara Dreaver while she was interviewing asylum seekers in the community during the Pacific Islands Forum.

Anjum asked RPC1 if RNZ Pacific could interview him; but he was told it was a matter for the Nauru government and he didn’t know how to contact them, so the interview was conducted over the phone instead.

RNZ Pacific was driven to the RPC1 detention centre by a local man who did not want to be named for fear of negative repercussions.

Despite his fears of being discovered with journalists, the man supported the detention centre and said it would be a positive boost to the economy and harken back to the “glory days” when Nauru made huge sums of money from phosphate mines.

“Lots of jobs, lots of cash.”

He said asylum seekers were creating “fake news” and that their complaints were “groundless”.

“Asylum seekers take everything for granted and they ask for more than what they already have. They ask to go to Australia immediately without any processing.

“Locals say their lives are better than those of locals.

“The fact is, they have it all here; they have free transportation, free food, free health insurance, all that stuff – if they say they don’t have that, it’s a lie.”

He said most asylum seekers had integrated well into the community, with one from Pakistan even opening an Indian restaurant.

Quota is too small

Umair Bacha from Pakistan has been in Nauru for six months. The first three months were spent in RPC1 and the other three months in the community.

He and a group of others live in what the locals call the Ijuw camp.

Bacha said his experience at RPC1 was good and he was living well in the community, but the allowances Australia allocated were not enough.

Bacha and other asylum seekers in the community said he has not been updated on processing timelines.

Mohammad Saju Ahmed, another asylum seeker living in the community, said he was only told it would be a long process.

“Some say eight years; some say 10 years,” Ahmed said.

Bacha and Ahmed said they receive a $460 monthly living allowance but are not allowed to work.

“It’s very expensive here, very expensive,” Ahmed said.

Not eligible for New Zealand

Since 2013, Australia has agreed that no one Came by boat for protection Will settle in Australia.

In June 2022, New Zealand agreed to resettle 450 refugees from Nauru by 2025. Under Australia’s refugee resettlement arrangements.

A New Zealand government spokesman said 172 refugees had been resettled under the arrangement and all refugees resettled under the arrangement were currently in Australia.

“People currently on Nauru are not eligible for resettlement arrangements between Australia and New Zealand,” the spokesperson said.

“People smuggling is a very serious problem. It challenges the integrity of international borders and immigration systems, while generating huge profits for criminals.”

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who met with President Adeang on Thursday in Nauru, said it would be up to the prime minister to announce whether New Zealand would take in more refugees.

Asked whether he thought Australia should host detention centres, Peters said countries had sovereignty over their borders.

“No one has the power to order me to land in Australia, I can only do what I want to do,” he said.

“If people are here illegally, how do they suddenly get the same rights that local residents, especially indigenous people, have?”

There are no smartphones in RPC1

Anjam said the Australian Border Force confiscated his smartphone in Broome and replaced it with a bricked phone, the same for everyone else in RPC1.

He was told it was for security purposes, but no one explained to him what that meant.

Anum said asylum seekers can access email and YouTube, but the internet is subject to many restrictions.

“You can’t search for anything; Google doesn’t work, everything is blocked. You can watch videos, that’s it. Facebook Messenger — you can’t use it.”

He said people inside had lost family members but were not allowed to make video calls with their families back home when they requested it. He said he was not allowed to call home when his son was in critical condition after being poisoned.

Favero said WhatsApp is the most important tool on smartphones.

“We normally contact people through our detention advocacy program. Contact on Nauru was extremely difficult.”

She said it had previously been difficult to spread information about what was happening, and that people being banned from using smartphones had made the problem worse.

“This once again demonstrates the utter moral failure of offshore detention and is why we are so distressed to see people being transferred to Nauru once again.”

Newhouse said he was “extremely concerned” to hear that people in the detention center were having limited contact with the outside world.

“It is the only way they can hold prison guards and those who incarcerate them accountable, protect themselves from human rights abuses and ensure they are treated appropriately and their refugee claims are properly processed,” he said.

Nauru is responsible for – Australia

RNZ Pacific last week asked Australia’s Department of Home Affairs a number of questions, including how many people were being held on Nauru, what the timeframe for asylum claims was and why their smartphones were being confiscated.

A department spokesman said they would not provide details of deportees on Nauru for regional processing due to privacy considerations and operational issues.

But they said the Nauruan government was responsible for implementing the regional processing arrangements, including the management of individuals.

“All personnel transferred to Nauru have been provided with a mobile phone and access to the internet,” the spokesman said.

They said Australia supported the Nauruan government’s provision of health services through contracted health service providers, including torture and trauma counselling and specialist health services such as dentistry, obstetrics, radiology and pharmacy.

“Nauru has always had at least one doctor providing services to the mobile population,” they said.