The Pacific Solution Under Howard

September 2007:
Seventy-two Sri Lankans who have been held on Nauru have been granted refugee status by the Immigration Department.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/12/2031316.htm
Contact the Minister’s office to ask that they be resettled in Australia:
The Hon Kevin Andrews, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Tel: (02) 6277 7860       Fax: (02) 6273 4144
Email: Kevin.Andrews.MP@aph.gov.au
Detention adds to the trauma of people who are genuine refugees. Refugees flee in any way they can. Blaming the victim will not help stop people smuggling!

January 2007:
of the two Iraqi men remaining in detention, one is in a Brisbane hospital, the other is awaiting resettlement in a third country. (which has been secured.)
Nauru is now keeping Burmese asylum seekers, from the minority Rohingya community in indefinite detention. They have been on the run for eighteen years with nowhere allowing them to call any place “home” Now they are experiencing Australian “hospitality”.

March 2006:
Only two asylum seekers remain on Nauru since the others came to Australia in 2005.
They have started up a web page at http://www.leftonnauru.com/. Messages of support can be sent from the site. Both have refugee status but are looking for a country to accept them. (Australia will not, and of course any reasons for that are not told because of privacy. But the men themselves don’t know.)

comment 2nd July 2005
All the families and some of the young Afghan men are now in Australia. Those few who are left are in desperate need of phone cards.

Remaining on Nauru, Friday 28th June 2005.:
18 Iraqis (includes one couple still in Melbourne for medical treatment)
11 Afghans
1 Bangladeshi Ahmadi
1 stateless Bihari 2 from Iran
1 Pakistani Ahmadi

News and photos have come out of Nauru! (17th April 2005)

“This week Mullaie and the others on Nauru were finally able to plead their case directly to the outside world after Nauru’s Minister for Internal Affairs, David Adeang, allowed The Age unfettered access to the asylum-seeker camp and its population of broken souls.
It had been a long time coming.
Under the former Nauru government, led by Rene Harris, requests for visas by journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates were consistently rejected. This suited an Australian Government determined to maintain the deterrent value of its border protection policy but keen that its human consequences remain hidden from view.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Immigration/Heading-for-breakdown-on-Alis-isle…

other articles:
Nauru child detainees running on empty (Sydney Morning Herald)
broken hearts (The Age)
and photo:
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/04/15/nauru_graphic.jpg

This page is devoted to information about the plight of those asylum seekers who never even made it to Australia, but were diverted under Howard’s Tampa legislation to endure imprisonment in conditions that may be worse than those in the mainland centres. Some have since been returned to the countries from which they originally fled, without ever stepping foot on our soil. Some have been found to be genuine refugees and been allowed to come to Australia on Temporary Protection Visas. Others remain and become increasingly desperate …

Megan Saunders of The Australian reported on 16 Apr 2002 that, according to the Government’s own figures, the cost of detaining boatpeople on the remote Australian outposts of Christmas and Cocos islands at between $200 and $300 a day was more than double the expense of keeping them on the mainland.

Huge Cost Of The Pacific Solution – media statement by Stephen Smith, Shadow Minister for Immigration (11 February 2004).

Nauru camps “psychiatrist’s nightmare”: doctor – The 7.30 Report, ABC Television, 15 May 2003. Reporter: Nick McKenzie. Almost 450 asylum seekers, including more than 100 children, are still being held on the island of Nauru as part of the Federal Government’s ‘Pacific solution’. According to the Government, most of the detainees are in good physical and mental health. But Dr Maarten Dormaar, the former head psychiatrist at the two Nauru detention camps, tells a very different story. Late last year he quit his job, unable to continue working in what he described as “a psychiatrist’s nightmare” …

Inside Nauru: Pacific Despair – read the transcript of the SBS TV Dateline documentary program in the January 2003 archives. Reporter Bronwyn Adcock talked to Iraquis who have been in detention for 16 months, have been rejected as refugees, and can’t return home: “Nauru is already extremely hot and humid, but under the tin roof and plastic sheeting, the temperature is oppressive. As people pile into the room, desperate to tell their story, the most striking thing is their poor psychological state …”

The Pacific Solution is no solution – Andrew Hewett examines the impact of the so-called “Pacific Solution” on the rights of asylum seekers, on Australia’s aid priorities, and on development, human rights and the treatment of Pacific Islander displaced people within the Pacific region. (February 2002). Based on their submission to the “Children Overboard” enquiry. From Oxfam’s Community Aid Abroad website.

Q&A on the Pacific Solution from BBC News Online (UK) and Pacific states step into the breach: “For the refugees, life on Nauru is likely to be far from pleasant.”

Caritas Australia’s submission (PDF) to the “Children Overboard” enquiry, focussing on the Pacific Solution.

PNG bishop condemns Australia’s ‘Pacific solution’ – reports the Catholic News (20 Mar 2002)

Australia: Asylum seekers – where to now? – news item from Amnesty International about John Pace’s report .

Spy tape reveals Nauru despair – The Age, June 22. Artist Kate Durham and BBC reporter Sarah Macdonald secretly filmed footage for a future documentary. Ms Durham reported: “detainees were physically and mentally ill from living in filthy conditions caused by a permanent water shortage. Contagious stomach and skin infections were rife and many detainees were very depressed, she said. Drinking water is shipped in from the Solomon Islands. She said millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money were being wasted building facilities on an island incapable of sustaining its own population.”

Margo Kingston wrote in The Age (May 15 2002) on the mathematics of the Budget provisions for Border Protection: “… before the Tampa and the Pacific solution, the government expected to process 5,500 boat people a year onshore this financial year. It now expects to process none onshore and 4,500 offshore next financial year. This means that we will spend an extra $300 million – in upgraded surveillance, a new detention centre, bribes to Nauru, and all the rest – to reduce the number of boat people trying to get here by a mere 1,000 a year. That is $300,000 per boat person dissuaded from the journey. You’ve got to be joking.” (read the article for detailed analysis and figures).

The Pacific Solution is a fraud on us – says Bill Hayden in The Age (March 15 2002). “It’s already cost more than $500 million, and the rip-off of the Australian public to pay this bill has scarcely started . . . It is a thoroughly objectionable display of Australian neo-colonialism, of exploiting the dependency and vulnerability of poor non-white nations.” (He also comments on the transformation of Phillip Ruddock from gentle Christian to “pit-bull terrier”.)

Position paper on the Pacific Solution (PDF) from the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council – May 2002.