{"id":841,"date":"2005-11-17T10:31:47","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T18:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=841"},"modified":"2005-11-17T10:31:47","modified_gmt":"2005-11-17T18:31:47","slug":"only-two-prisoners-left-on-nauru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/17\/only-two-prisoners-left-on-nauru\/","title":{"rendered":"Only Two Prisoners Left on Nauru"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you who know me, you know that I’m obsessed with geographic oddities around the world. One of my favorites is Nauru<\/a>, 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 was “rescued” through a huge influx of cash by the Australian government when they built a detention center on the island, one of the largest icons of Australia’s policy of mandatory detention<\/a> for all those arriving without proper documentation, including refugees. This American Life did a great radio piece on Nauru<\/a> (RealAudio) in 2003, and it remains to this day as one of my all-time favorites.<\/p>\n

Therefore it is my “pleasure” to announce that as reported in Australian media<\/a> two weeks ago, there remain two detainees\/refugees left on Nauru. <\/p>\n

THE last two asylum seekers in detention on Nauru say they are hitting rock bottom, with 25 of their friends moving to Australia this week on refugee and humanitarian visas.<\/p>\n

“I feel I am very alone on this very tiny piece of land in the middle of the sea,” Mohammed Sagar, 29, said yesterday.<\/p>\n

And Mohammad Faisal, 25, who has poor eyesight, said: “My only option now is just to keep going with medication and sit alone inside my room and cry.”<\/p>\n

Both Iraqis were told their claims for refugee status were accepted, but they had failed a security clearance and must remain indefinitely on Nauru.<\/p>\n

Both say they have no idea why, and insist they do not represent a security threat to Australia or any other country.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never expected that I would some day get such an accusation thrown on me, because it’s terrible,” said Mr Sagar. “I have never been in a police station, for a small fight even. How come to be a security threat for a whole country? It’s terrible. I can’t imagine it, even.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who know me, you know that I’m obsessed with geographic oddities around the world. One of my favorites is 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 was “rescued” through a huge influx of cash by the Australian government when they built a detention center on the island, one of the largest icons of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-foreign-affairs","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-dz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}