Why phoning the President of Nauru is a bad idea
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Tony Abbott has told us that his first task, if the Coalition is elected, will be “to pick up the phone to the President of Nauru” with a view, apparently, to re-establishing the Topside and State House detention centres on the island and transporting asylum seekers there. As one of the few Australian doctors who has worked on Nauru (in 2003, including in the Topside Camp), I believe this is a very bad idea. My main concern is the effect on the mental health of detainees, imprisoned indefinitely on a tiny and (for them) alien island more than 3000 kilometres from the eastern coastal cities of Australia. Topside was set up in 2001; by November 2002 Dr Martin Dormaar, the psychiatrist employed in the camp, had resigned in despair at the failure of the International Organisation for Migration and the Howard government to respond to his concerns at the level of psychiatric illness developing among detainees. After his departure the situation only grew worse: numerous organisations including Oxfam and the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists reported high levels of mental illness and the lack of mental health services for detainees on Nauru. I personally noted significant psychiatric symptoms among women I cared for. When Senator Amanda Vanstone finally closed the camp in 2005 it was because of the deteriorating mental health of remaining detainees. However for those among the Australian population unconcerned about the mental health of people locked up by our government, there are also multiple financial reasons for not reopening the Nauru camps. Nauru (population about 12,000, that is, half that of Broken Hill) is a dot in the Pacific some 21 kilometres square; 80% of this has been mined for phosphate and is uninhabitable. Topside was hastily built on a shadeless rubbish dump at the top of the island; only a few decayed dongas now remain. There is very little infrastructure on Nauru: everything must be brought at great cost from Australia to build and maintain a detention centre, feed, clothe and shelter the inmates. An unreliable water supply depends on one ageing desalination plant (run on diesel shipped from Australia) — even water may need to be transported to the island for potential detainees. Australia has a responsibility to provide health care of a reasonable standard for refugees. In the absence of services in the ill-equipped Nauruan health system, most investigations must be done in Australia, all drugs must come from Australia, all patients requiring treatment for serious conditions must be sent to Australia. The costs, especially those for even a single medical transfer by air, are enormous. Nauruans are cash-strapped and understandably see the re-opening of the camps as providing needed jobs and income. They are also intelligent and humane — they were personally very supportive of previous refugees although many privately questioned the ethics of the exercise. And there was certainly resentment at higher quality medical care being provided to the camps’ inmates than they themselves received. Previous Nauruan Foreign Minister David Adeang expressed great concern at the prolonged detention of asylum seekers in what was supposed to be a processing centre; present Foreign Minister Kieren Keke (who is also an excellent practising anaesthetist) has hinted that if asked to re-open the camps, Nauruans would place some conditions on how they would be run. Australia has an obligation to assist Pacific neighbours, not least Nauru, but re-opened detention camps, a huge expense for Australian taxpayers, will not have long-term benefits for Nauruans. Tony Abbott should think again. |
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17 Comments
Maybe we need the legacy of Nauru to remind us what happens when you give all your mineral wealth away and leave nothing to show for it. Could a demineralised Australia in 2100 be pleading with the rich nations of the world to again become a penal colony?
Perhaps it would be appropriate to compare the mental health of detainees in detention centres with their physical and mental health in the jurisdiction from which they claim to be fleeing. Whilst I can be very sympathetic, it would seem to me that if one is fleeing from the threat of imminent physical punishment of death that an Australian detention centre would be a much more preferable alternative, although not being the four-star holiday camp that they may have been led to expect would be waiting for them in Australia.
Whether you like it or not no country can afford to have open borders and constrained borders require border control. The civil liberties we afford our own citizens can be readily exploited by opportunists which is why governments of both persuasions are determined not to let so-called asylum seekers set foot on Australian soil where the full array of community funded legal aid is then readily available as an arsenal with which to undermine our border control provisions while their claims are being assessed.
It should be noted that the reason why Australia runs these little “penal colonies” (although and neither political party will admit it publicly) outside of Australian legal jurisdiction is because of mesiannic fervour with which refugee advocates exploit our legal system to their own personal satisfaction by using every legal trick in the book to prolong the deportation of failed refugee claimants. Although this may give them a warm feeling, it does nothing for the refused claimants other than prolong the inevitable, but it also it causes sympathy for genuine refugees to be lost by mainstream Australians who know they are being exploited by legal chicanery.
We cannot act as the world’s receptacle of displaced persons or those desiring to have a higher standard of living. Those Australian who wants to significantly reduce their own standard of living are free to do so by giving tax-deductible funding at any one of the numerous aid groups offering assistance in third world countries. Please do not try to make me sacrifice my standard of living to satisfy your particular ego. Also please do not try to make me feel guilty by only offering safe refuge to “refugee ” claimants which is not up to their advocates standards of comfort. Anything that Australia is providing has at least one distinct advantage in that these people are safe from persecution from the persecutors in their home jurisdiction, which is my understanding what a refugee is.
Greg Angelo - while asylum seekers should not expect a ‘four-star holiday camp’ when they arrive in Australia, the reality is that most of them will eventually be accepted as refugees and resettled in Australia. How can they integrate themselves into Australia and become productive members of our community when they have such high levels of mental illness resulting from their detention?
Given that most of them will be accepted into Australia, we owe it to them and to ourselves to provide them with an acceptable standard of psychiatric care during detention, and to limit as much as possible the amount of time they spend there.
I thank you for this article. Truth at last!
Perhaps those that think the re-opening of Naaru detention centres is a good thing should spend a week there, to give them some small idea of what it is like. The author of this article has been there, I’m more inclined to accept her view on conditions there than armchair critics that think it would be a good idea.
Thank you for this insight, Caroline. However the final line is questionable as it suggests Tony Abbott thought at all.
To say Nauru is agreeable to a detention centre is like saying we will build a tourist spot and supply the tourists for them. To a cash strapped tiny nation with a tiny job base any offer of money and jobs is acceptable. Thats is not to say Nauru is corrupt or pliable just stating they have made poor decisions in the past which has squandered the wealth legacy from its now dwindled resource. Not that long ago Nauru was also happy to be a base for money laundering but changed its rules under pressure from various governments.
All that aside my objection to the island as a place to process people is that its punishment that is the aim rather than to find out it refugee status is genuine. There is nothing for the locals to do much less detainees. Worst of all its all for the section of the public that actually believes the implied suggestion from the coalition that we have an armada of boats bringing tens of thousands of arrivals to our shores. In the meantime plane arrivals with valid and illegal visas waltz in and have a higher rejection rate for refugee status. What weirdo sect of christianity would advocate this type of behaviour because you would not think it is the action of mainstream christianity ?
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
I can only say that I know how courageous Caroline de Costa is in speaking up politically as a Medico, good on you. You and the good Dr Martin Dormaar can not be ignored except by cruel and ignorant fools and I am sure you are both surprised as to who and how many they can be.
The ‘concentration camp’ solution is always attractive to certain types especially if it will do serious psychological torture to its inmates at no extra cost.
Signed - ‘Psychology, psychology, psychology is everything’
As de Costa says of the Nauru camp “Topside was hastily built on a shadeless rubbish dump at the top of the island; only a few decayed dongas now remain.”
I have previously described all that remains as rotting concrete but I was wrong. The “dongas” appear to be flimsy temporary demountibles about the size of shipping containers, and have been stripped of windows, doors and anything else remotely useful.
It is astounding that Scot Morrison, Liberal spokesman on turning back the boats, took the media on a tour there recently. Did he think this was a worthy legacy of his government’s billion dollars. Talk about wasting tax-payers money with nothing lasting to show for it, unless you count the lasting effect of our trashed reputation.
And incidentally Australia should have a law equivalent to the USA’s Logan Act which prohibits anyone not part of the authorized government to conduct private diplomacy with a foreign power. Abbott and Morrison came very close to doing precisely that which is no surprise since they have never accepted they lost the election in 2007.
This article seems to suggest there are humanitarian and economic reasons to retreat from the Nauru ‘solution’ but given the basis of this program is purely political I can see no likelihood of a change in direction any time soon, psychological trauma or no.
It was an appalling gulag under Howard, and would be again under Abbott, but the sad truth is that most Australians prefer not to know or care. Maybe telling them that its costs are astronomical may make them pay some attention, because appealing to their humanity seems not to have worked in the past.
Thanks for your article Caroline, it confirms what some of us have known from other sources, and you are very courageous to speak out.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/08/09/letter-australian-political-party-leaders-regarding-asylum-seekers-and-irregular-mig
Forcible removal to an offshore processing site is highly questionable under international law. First, Timor-Leste and Nauru do not have functioning asylum processing systems and cannot guarantee refugees’ effective protection. Second, the Australian-bound asylum seekers did not first pass through Timor-Leste or Nauru en route to Australia and have no other ties to those countries. Third, the transfers would be involuntary. While some governments have at times legitimately returned asylum seekers to countries of first asylum that have comparable asylum standards and procedures and through which the asylum seekers first passed en route to their final destination, this is not the case with either the ALP or Coalition proposals. Australia has little basis under international law for forcibly sending them to such third countries.”
Does anyone even care that it is illegal and immoral to waste lives in this way? 25 of the refugees who were illegally sent to jail in Indonesia are still in detention, some in Romania of all places.
It might truly shock some here but asylum seekers have equal human rights with you.
Greg Angelo - Your argument is flawed on two counts. First, no one is advocating for “open borders.” Australia’s refugee and humanitarian intake is capped at 13, 750 each year - irrespective of the number of boat or plane arrivals. Treating asylum seekers more humanely will not change that number. Secondly, as the article pointed out, it costs more to maintain the pacific solution - and in fact the entire mandatory detention policy - than to process asylum seeker claims in alternative community style forms of processing centres; including the appropriate and necessary security and health checks. In other words, your concerns about the possible detrimental effects on the “standard of living” are not only inaccurate, but in fact lend support to the the kind of humane refugee policy that you argue against. Finally, the moral bases upon which you justify a ‘lesser form of abuse’ on asylum seekers than that which they have fled is abhorrent. If you can look yourself in the mirror and be content with the fact that Australia treats human beings fleeing from persecution in what is tantamount to physical & mental abuse - and to the degree that they feel compelled to self-mutilate, are driven to chronic depression and even suicide - then fine, that’s your choice. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that there is some kind of moral justification by hiding behind a bunch of lies about Australia’s “standard of living” or the risk of “unconstrained borders.”
I’m interested in the “resentment at higher quality medical care being provided to the camps’ inmates than they themselves received”. What does that mean for Gillard’s East Timor solution, where remote villages don’t even have electricity and running water, let alone high quality medical care?
Nauru has obesity and among the worlds worst diabetes problems which I very much doubt is the case in East Timor. John are you suggesting that the detention camps be set up in remote villages away from Dili similar to Nauru,s camp ? Both nations have their own problems to deal with and our patronage if it can be termed that way will not alleviate those problems. Instead of exporting our own we should deal with them ourselves, Christmas Island or otherwise.
The notion that we should think we can cap out humanitarian intake is a sick joke Vince. Imagine what Pakistan or any other country with the 99.997% of the refugees think of our meanness.
I lived and worked in Nauru at the time the Stateside camp was open, and I totally agree with this article. Nauruans treated the refugees very well, and the camp brought in at least $5 million a year of much needed assistance into Nauru through employment, health services and fuel for the generators etc on top of what was provided through the aid budget. But providing services in Nauru was incredibly expensive - the cost of regular plane charters, air freight, accommodation, capital works at the camp, the hospital etc. Quite apart from the humanitarian considerations of having refugees spend in some cases years on a tiny island without any certainty about their future, it was incredibly uneconomic to have the camp on Nauru, and it would be no different now.