Australian Illegal Immigration Detention Centres - Nauru

When human lives no longer matter
Senator Andrew Bartlett, Australian Democrats
July 31st 2003

Walking into the Topside Camp, established by the Australian
Government on Nauru to detain those asylum seekers intercepted in
Australian waters, I was unsure what to expect.

I have visited every migration detention facility in Australia,
including the current temporary facility on Christmas Island. They
are all unnatural places, but this incongruous Australian funded
imprisonment of hundreds of Iraqis and Afghanis on a small island,
sitting almost exactly on the equator, has a special sense of the
surreal.

Walking up to the gate, it seemed all of the camp's 300 plus
residents had gathered to welcome me. It is very difficult for
Australians wanting to visit the camp to get permission to enter
Nauru, so they get very few non-official visitors. A big sign,
reading "welcome to our detention centre", was stretched across the
gate, but my attention was immediately grabbed by the children.

So many children, young children, three, four, five years old,
gathered at the gate. All of them kept in camps since 2001. The
inescapable question arises again. How can this be that the
Australian taxpayer funds the deliberate imprisonment of children? I
think of my own daughter, 21 months old, in the crucial stages of
development. How would it be for her growing up in this sort of
place, perhaps separated from her father, without her or her parents
having any idea what her future is?

Our Government likes to call itself family friendly, yet it keeps
families with children locked up in these conditions.

The camp is a collection of demountables air-conditioned against the
year round heat. The facilities, such as sporting, recreational and
health are below that of centres in Australia. The showers and
toilets are also in demountables. These use brackish water that only
runs for about six hours, spread over various parts of the day. The
water difficulties are similar to what is experienced by all the
local residents of the island.

I am told the facilities at the other Nauru-based camp, called State
House, are worse, but I am advised not to visit there for safety
reasons. I am allowed to meet with people who are in that Camp, who
are brought to see me at Topside.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is contracted by
the Australian Government to run the facilities and assist in the
relocation of people once the Government has determined their refugee
status. They have a difficult task, as they have no say over what
happens to the detainees, but must deal with the deep ocean of
despair and depression that exists on the island camps. As was said
to me, you could put these people into Club Med and their condition
would still be almost the same, because it is the lack of freedom and
hope, the empty future for their children, that is the source of
their pain and suffering. Mental health issues comprise the vast
bulk of the work of the medical staff, but there is nothing they can
do to alleviate the cause.

Of course, the conditions on Nauru are not Club Med. They are very
basic and would be unpleasant to live in. Nauru is an impoverished
island. The local population of about 12 000 people, on an island
one-fifth the area of Christmas Island, are facing an economic crisis
and the presence of the Camps is currently the main economic input
for the nation. I spoke with some government members and officials,
as well as some youth workers at a local high school. Written on the
blackboard was a message urging teachers to please keep coming to
work, despite not having been paid for months. Virtually the only
people on the island being paid regularly are those working at the
Camps.

The biggest disgrace of our 'pro-family' Government is the women and
children in the Camps who are deliberately being kept apart from
husbands and fathers in Australia. Our Prime Minister, who has
recently lamented about the lack of male role models for children
growing up, is telling these women they must return alone with their
children to Iraq or Afghanistan, to circumstances where their
husbands were subject to severe persecutions. Their husbands cannot
leave Australia without losing their protection. The Immigration
Minister says their circumstances are considered separate from their
husband's because they arrived on different boats. This is as
logical as saying they are kept separate because their name starts
with the wrong letter, and these women know it.

But again, worst of all is the children. Four and five year old
girls who have no memory of their father and no understanding of why
they cannot go see to him, when they know where he is. And the
fathers in Australia, some of whom I have also met, being driven to
the brink by this enforced separation.

In the face of the Government generated harming of children, it seems
almost a minor fact that it is being done at the cost of hundreds of
millions of taxpayers' dollars - funds that could go to address major
needs in Australia, or indeed in Nauru and other Pacific neighbours.
Even those who manage to stagger out the other side of the hoops and
hurdles, such as the 40 people who are finally being allowed to apply
to enter Australia, nearly two years after they first sought our
help, are left traumatised, unsupported and uncertain of their future
while Australia provides temporary 'protection'. The Government
deliberately creates dysfunctional members of our community - at our
expense.

The Government has created a twisting labyrinth of cruelty and
faceless bureaucratic dispassion that is so heartless and so lacking
in any reason that Franz Kafka would not dared to have conjured it
up. Despite the lives destroyed, the vast resources squandered and
the children's futures that have been stolen, our Government has the
audacity to call their 'strategy' a success. Nothing more starkly
shows the sordid depths to which our body politic has sunk.