It’s been a little while since I last blogged about Nauru, a tiny island in the South Pacific (Population: 13,000) that entered into a Faustian tale of strip mining itself into oblivion during the bulk of the 20th century. It’s latest industry is running Australia’s awful offshore detention facility for refugees.
This past week, The Age ran a story about Mohammed Sagar, a 30-year-old Iraqi refugee who has been held on the island for the last five years. His companion, Mohammad Faisal, 26 — whom when I last blogged about him, said: “My only option now is just to keep going with medication and sit alone inside my room and cry” — has become suicidal and had to be evacuated to Australia, leaving just Sagar.
On August 19 last year two Iraqi asylum seekers on Nauru were informed by letter that they had been “assessed by the relevant Australian authority to be a risk to Australia’s national security”.
Therefore, they were told, they were not owed protection under the United Nation’s refugee convention.
Unlike criminals, these two were given no inkling of the basis of the case against them, and no opportunity to answer it. Was it something they had said, done, represented or thought before, or even after, they fled Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship? Or was it something ASIO thought they had said, done, represented or thought?
In other Nauru news, seven Burmese refugees were moved to the island last month.
