A report which the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/ Doctors without Borders) released this week says the island nation of Nauru is facing a mental health crisis. The Indefinite Despair report includes medical data MSF gathered during the past year while it was contracted by the Nauruan government to deliver mental health services. These Read more
A former president of Nauru says Australia is “complicit in a political prosecution.” Nauru has abolished a decades-old link to Australia’s legal system, removing the island nation’s highest court of appeal in a move critics have described as “shocking” and “concerning” for human rights. On 12 December last year, the Nauruan government quietly informed Australia it wished to unilaterally withdraw Read more
If you had been told thirty years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed. In 1992 we introduced a system of indefinite mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Since that time, we have accepted the idea that certain Read more
The first Seventh-day Adventist church in Nauru was officially opened on April 9 by Maveni Kaufononga, president of the Trans-Pacific Union Mission (TPUM) church region, based in Fiji, and Nauru Government Minister Shadlog Bernicke. Reagan Aliklik, the elder and landowner who donated the land for the church, shared a brief history of Adventism in the Read more
Tomorrow Bill English has his first pyjama party with Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull in Queenstown. This style of diplomacy has been going on for a number of years. Whether it’s morning-after kayaking on Sydney harbour or taking in our own Southern Alps, the annual Prime Ministerial sleepover says a lot about the relationship between New Zealand Read more
“It’s time to revive the Tampa spirit and rescue the refugees our Australian neighbours have sent off to rot in hellish prison camps on remote islands like Nauru and Manus,” says columnist Brian Rudman. Amnesty International is calling on New Zealand to take a lead in exerting international pressure on Australia over its detention centre Read more
What if our government really wanted to save money? As well as going after $6.7 billion in its omnibus savings bill, it could go after the billions more it costs to run our immigration detention centres: $9.2 billion in the past three years, $3.9 billion to $5.5 billion in the next four, according to the most complete Read more
On the weekend, I joined Robert Manne, Tim Costello and John Menadue in calling for an end to the limbo imposed on proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. I think this can be done while keeping the boats stopped. I think it ought be done. Appearing on the ABC’s 7.30 program last Thursday, after Read more
Human Rights Watch has questioned the Australian Government’s suggestion that it has limited control over the running of the offshore processing centre on Nauru.Nauru This comes as Canberra rejected a report by the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International which found that it is ignoring appalling human rights abuses against asylum seekers and refugees held Read more
“In my entire career of 43 years I have never seen more atrocity than I have seen in the incarcerated situations of Manus Island and Nauru.” Paul Stevenson has had a life in trauma. The psychologist and traumatologist has spent 40 years helping people make sense of their lives in the aftermath of disaster, of Read more