E-Paper
Abuse rife in Australian immigration centre: Report
SYDNEY: More than 2,000 leaked reports detailing allegations of sexual assault, child abuse and self-harm in Australian immigration centres on Nauru were published Wednesday, prompting rights groups to renew calls for refugees to be resettled elsewhere.
Under Canberra’s policy, asylum-seekers arriving by boat are sent to the remote Pacific island nation of Nauru or to Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. They will not be allowed to resettle in Australia even if they eventually win refugee status. While the flow of asylum boats to Australia has dried up, some 442 people remain on tiny Nauru and almost double that number on Manus.
The incident reports leaked to The Guardian Australia include allegations that asylum-seekers, including children, on Nauru face assaults, sexual abuse and mental distress. The reports allege incidents such as guards threatening a boy with death and only allowing a young woman a longer shower in return for sexual favours.
Mental stress caused by prolonged detention was deemed to be the cause of alleged cases of self-harm, including a woman trying to hang herself and a girl sewing her lips together.
One girl wrote in her school book in 2014 that “she was tired, doesn’t like camp and wants to die”. The report said she wrote: “I want DEATH” and “I need death”. The Guardian said the reports, published in redacted form to remove identifiers, were written by staff in the detention centre and were the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside Australia’s immigration regime.