Nauru asylum seeker protest targets Australia House in London
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Version 0 of 1. A reading of more than 2,000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camp for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru will be narrated in a 10-hour protest outside the Australian high commission in London. Totalling more than 8,000 pages, as published by the Guardian earlier this month, the personal accounts of sexual abuse, torture and humiliation inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention will be narrated by members of the International Alliance Against Mandatory Detention, which has organised the event. “We want Australia to be internationally shamed,” said Sarah Keenan, who co-organised the event with seven other members of the alliance. “We want everyone to hear these documented incidents of abuse, self-harm, humiliation and squalor that is the everyday life for refugees on Nauru. “The duration, monotony and repetition entailed in the reading of each file echoes the normalisation of the violence and tedium endured by refugees in indefinite detention,” she said. The Nauru files – the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside Australia’s immigration regime – set out as never before the assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and living conditions endured by asylum seekers held by the Australian government. The picture they paint is one of routine dysfunction and deliberate cruelty. “These detainees must be settled in the Australian community as is their right under international law,” said Nadine El-Enany, another alliance organiser. “We have chosen to read the report out in front of Australia House because this narrative of abuse directly contradicts the image the Australian high commission seeks to convey of Australia as a progressive nation and a desirable destination for tourists, students, highly skilled workers and international investors. “Nauru Files Reading embodies the ongoing racist violence that has defined the settler colony of Australia since its inception,” she added. The protests are timed to coincide with a national day of action in Australia, with events planned across the country to demand that the government immediately close the camps on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island. The Guardian’s analysis of the files revealed that children were vastly over-represented in the reports. More than half of the 2,116 reports – 1,086 incidents, or 51.3% of the total – involve children, although children made up only about 18% of those in detention on Nauru during the time covered by the reports, May 2013 to October 2015. The findings came just weeks after the brutal treatment of young people in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory was exposed, leading to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announcing a wide-ranging public inquiry. Some reports contain distressing examples of behaviour by traumatised children. According to a report from September 2014, a girl had sewn her lips together. A guard saw her and began laughing at her. In July that year, a child under the age of 10 undressed and invited a group of adults to insert their fingers into her vagina; in February 2015, a young girl gestured to her vagina and said a male asylum seeker “cut her from under”. In the files, there are seven reports of sexual assault of children, 59 reports of assault on children, 30 of self-harm involving children and 159 of threatened self-harm involving children. The files raise stark questions about how information is reported on Nauru, one of Australia’s two offshore detention centres for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. They highlight serious concerns about the ongoing risks to children and adults held on the island. They show how the Australian government has failed to respond to warning signs and reveal sexual assault allegations – many involving children – that have never previously been disclosed. The most damning evidence emerges from the words of the staff working in the detention centre themselves – the people who compile the reports. These caseworkers, guards, teachers and medical officers have been charged with caring for hundreds of asylum seekers on the island. “The Australian government detains refugees indefinitely [on these islands] as part of its offshore detention policy designed to deter refugees from arriving in Australia by boat,” said El-Enany. “More than 500 refugees are detained on Nauru, including many children. “Refugees on Nauru are regularly subjected to abuse, violence, sexual assault and rape. Self-harm and suicide attempts are common,” she said. |