The Guardian today [publishes a vast number of leaked reports from Nauru](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention), one of Australia’s offshore processing sites for asylum-seekers (in reality, a camp for the indefinite detention of asylum-seekers). The reports, or “unconfirmed allegations” as the Australian government would have it, are a harrowing catalogue of physical and sexual abuse, and of consequences for mental and bodily well-being, often suffered by children. These places exist to appease an Australian citizenry hostile to the arrival of “boat people” who believe that such people — even those determined to be refugees by Convention criteria — are not their problem. Though Nauru is a particularly vile example, it would be wrong to think that Australians are alone in their attitudes to refugees and asylum seekers. Other Western governments are happy to do deals with other states beyond their borders to ensure that the wretched of the earth are out of sight, where they can exist as an abstraction, not disturbing the conscience of their own citizens. Human rights, together with other liberal principles like the rule of law, have become, for many liberal democratic states, the exclusive right of the native-born citizen or, at best, someone else’s problem, somewhere else.
I’d be interested to learn from people in Australia now, how much traction this latest leak is getting in the Australian media. A surf to the websites of the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald suggests not much.
{ 26 comments }
Just An Australian 08.10.16 at 8:41 am
“Human rights, together with other liberal principles like the rule of law, have become, for many liberal democratic states, the exclusive right of the native-born citizen”
I think it seems more accurate to say, they’re figured out how to take them away from non-citizens. Citizens are next, though the non-native born will probably get to go first on divide and conquer grounds.
I’m inherently suspicious of ‘give them an inch, they’ll take a mile” but I think it’s actually the case here. Rule of Law. Human Rights. Democracy. All under grave assault.
Emma in Sydney 08.10.16 at 8:45 am
You wouldn’t expect any of it to make The Australian, Murdoch’s right wing clusterfuck. The journalists remaining there probably cheer for torture of refugees and asylum seekers, they wouldn’t give a toss.
The Sydney Morning Herald is regularly out-journalismed by BuzzFeed these days, which along with the Guardian, actually produces news.
It is vicious, shameful and horrible, what is being done in our name and there are many of us who try to speak out, march, sign petitions and vote Green, to try and end the horror on Manus and Nauru. Unfortunately, not enough of us yet.
Peter T 08.10.16 at 8:53 am
Made the SMH and the ABC, although not in banner headlines. Also picked up by the on-line activist group Get-Up, which may have more impact.
Val 08.10.16 at 11:34 am
Not covered on ABC news or 7.30, here in Melbourne. To be fair, everyone has been preoccupied with the #censusfail, which has been the biggest stuff up for over a hundred years in that regard.
However, the ABC is toeing the government line that ‘hostile forces’ (read China) mounted some kind of DoS attack. I have no words for how stupid they are. (I will not rub it in that our government is led by a man whom you once thought was more capable than Julia Gillard, but if ever anyone asks me to prove that ‘unconscious bias’ exists …)
We all keep thinking our governments are stupid, but maybe they really are evil. I am hoping that the Greens will start really jumping up and down over Nauru soon, if they are not already.
Weaver 08.10.16 at 1:32 pm
This is a Guardian exclusive, so of course Fairfax and Newscorp aren’t covering it. That’s the legacy media way; not giving free publicity to rival media companies is way more important than actually reporting the news. What are their headlines supposed to be: “Other people than us better at gathering news”?
Mind you, according to Google (I now see) the Daily Mail‘s local branch has picked it up – go figure. There’s even some commercial TV and Newscorp coverage (plus ABC and SBS) in their list (and Newscorp’s headline is a reassuring “Government to examine Nauru files”), but nothing at all from Fairfax papers (the alleged quality press over here: Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age, Canberra Times, &c). Astonishing.
Guy_H 08.10.16 at 1:41 pm
It isn’t on the immediate homepage of any major Aussie news website (I think its buried several scrolls down) and it’s definitely not trending on Twitter (preoccupied by the Olympics and the census). In other words, no one seems to cares. As bad as the conditions are, I suspect even if publicized, many Australians would continue to silently support detention policies to act as a deterrence to newcomers (perhaps with a few tweaks to make detention more “humane”). The Guardians and Buzzfeeds of the world can continue to seethe.
ZM 08.10.16 at 3:26 pm
I got emails about it from the refugee support group locally, a couple of the women are very good at emailing news stories and updates and so on. The ABC news website has a story http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/nauru-data-leak-paints-disturbing-picture-of-refugee-abuse/7712890
I think a lot of people have been aware of this sort of thing taking place for some time now in Australia although this shows that the incidence is higher than people may have previously been aware. Sometimes I find it a bit overwhelming how horrible the conditions are.
I think the detention centres are in legal difficulties now anyhow since the PNG Supreme Court ruled the one on Manus Island is unconstitutional and needs to be shut down, and I think Nauru has let people in detention have access to go outside of detention, but its dangerous and women have been raped out of detention. I have an idea this was to stop a legal challenge, as the Solicitor General then said it wasn’t detention anymore it was a “designated place of residence.” But the refugees don’t want to live there since they don’t feel safe.
There was a prominent campaign earlier this year in Australia called #LetThemStay calling for 267 refugees in Australia not to be sent to offshore detention by the government.
The leaked documents have meant the same groups — GetUp, the Human Rights Law Centre and Australian Churches Refugees Taskforce — have initiated another campaign #BringThemHere calling on the Government to bring all the people in detention on Manus Island and Nauru to Australia.
They have asked people to use social media and the news media to build public momentum behind the campaign, and there is a petition here: http://www.getup.org.au/bringthemhere
Gareth Wilson 08.10.16 at 11:50 pm
These places exist to appease an Australian citizenry hostile to the arrival of “boat people†who believe that such people — even those determined to be refugees by Convention criteria — are not their problem.
What obligations does the Convention impose on the Australian citizenry, as opposed to the government?
guestlyfe 08.11.16 at 2:25 am
There’s been a fairly recent scandal and subsequent Royal Commission announcement concerning the abuse of children prisoners on the mainland in the Northern Territory, so that’s still fresh in some people’s minds. There was a call for that Royal Commission to be expanded to offshore centres like Nauru but they were ignored. Perhaps this new leak will get those calls over the line, perhaps not. But it’s been certainly overshadowed by the census fail which is also being pinned as a failure of the federal govt.
Emma in Sydney 08.11.16 at 3:59 am
It’s not clear what we can actually do other than donate to groups who are helping the refugees with their legal and other struggles, volunteer to help refugees who are already here, and lobby our local members of parliament to change their policies. Which many Australians are doing. It’s not like we can get to the gates of the camps and stage protests there. There doesn’t seem to be any civil disobedience that will work, which is part of the reason for keeping them offshore — governments soon found out what happened when asylum seekers were locked up in Villawood and other urban detention centres — they made friends, supporters and advocates and many of them were accepted and released. It is a situation full of futile despair for both them and us. Worse for them, of course.
J-D 08.11.16 at 4:08 am
That is not accurate: there is no ABC report that ‘hostile forces’ were responsible.
Jexpat 08.11.16 at 6:50 am
J-D @ #10
Yes, the ABC has indeed gone there:
Census attack ‘could be Chinese hackers unhappy about Mack Horton v Sun Yang drugs saga’
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/census-hack-by-chinese-unhappy-at-horton-v-yang-saga-expert-says/7714330
Sancho 08.11.16 at 8:35 am
The Chinese have absolutely no incentive to derail the census, because all information gathered by the Australian government will immediately be lifted by the Chinese government.
It’s a large and cost-free gift to the CPC security apparatus.
Val 08.11.16 at 8:39 am
J-D you clearly have a problem with taking things very literally, and I think you may possibly also like to find fault with people (possibly particularly with women). They are not good or useful things to do. I will explain a couple of things to you, and I hope you will think about them.
In certain contexts, single quotation marks are called ‘scare quotes’. It can mean something is said ironically, or being held up to question. I don’t know if the ABC, or the government or the ABS, actually used the term ‘hostile forces’ (they may have) but the suggestion was clearly that people from outside Australia were mounting a DOS attack for hostile reasons. The idea was floated that the Chinese may have been doing this (as Jexpat says, some said in retaliation for remarks at the Olympics, but that wasn’t taken seriously on the ABC tv news). However one was definitely left with the impression that it was hostile, and that China was the most likely state to be involved if it was a state sponsored attack.
Those things are ridiculous and irresponsible things to be saying unless there is very clear and strong evidence. However what makes it worse is that a number of very reputable commenters suggest that, regardless of whether there were DoS attacks, the ABS system was not adequate to cope with the likely demand, and had not been adequately tested (see eg articles on The Conversation).
This is off-topic for JQ’s thread, so I won’t say anything further. However I’ve seen you do these silly attempts at gotchas quite often, and it’s really annoying. Lately you seem to have started targeting me, so I want to make it quite clear I won’t accept it. Think what you are doing and stop wasting people’s time.
J-D 08.11.16 at 9:15 am
Yes, the ABC has reported one cyber-security expert who says that there could have been an attack from China and also that there could have been an attack from inside Australia. The ABC has also reported the statements of other cyber-security experts, some of whom have discussed how denial-of-service attacks work and others who are reluctant to accept that there was a denial-of-service attack without more evidence being produced.
Given the choice between reporting what cyber-security experts have to say and not reporting what they have to say, I think the choice made by the ABC to report a variety of statements by cyber-security experts is entirely understandable.
Val 08.11.16 at 9:33 am
ZM
Have signed and shared the petition. I will try to write letters also.
ZM 08.11.16 at 12:42 pm
Val,
Oh good, I wasn’t sure whether to share it here or not. I hope the campaign takes off, #LetThemStay was quite successful at raising awareness.
The Age has a piece by Michael Koziol on how the census issues got more political attention:
“It’s amazing what gets up people’s grills, isn’t it? The census website going down is apparently a national calamity demanding urgent action. But children in Australia’s care being assaulted and abused in offshore detention camps? No biggie. Move along.
The vastly divergent reactions to the census fiasco and the Guardian’s publication of 2000 incident reports from Nauru are a fascinating study of the politics of this country, which appears to care more about an inconvenient IT bungle than systemic abuse of children and refugees.”
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/this-country-cares-more-about-a-computer-cockup-than-the-abuse-of-refugees-20160811-gqpxif.html
Val 08.11.16 at 1:39 pm
Yes I just saw that.
Nauru was covered on 7.30. Leigh Sales interviewed Dutton, shameless person that he is, but it was towards the end and between two feel-good stories so it wasn’t strongly featured.
Dave 08.11.16 at 6:28 pm
Nauru has a really incredible story. Jack Hitt published this piece about it in the NYT Magazine, highlighting its role in laundering Russian oligarch money after the collapse of the USSR
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/magazine/the-billion-dollar-shack.html?pagewanted=all
and he reported on its detainees in 2003
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/253/transcript
Rob 08.11.16 at 9:59 pm
The thing with this is that for folks in Australia, it’s a dog bites man story.
This comes on the back of years of hunger strikes, suicide and self harm attempts, trauma, self-immolations. We already know what is happening and what our government is paying millions to private contractors to do on our behalf. We already know it deep down, even if we don’t know all of the details. And so there’s not massive interest in the leaks.
The politics around this is pretty entrenched, and poisonous. It’s illustrative that the conservative Minister for Immigration responded by saying that some asylum seekers were burning themselves alive in order to get visas to Australia (!). The Labor opposition (who started mandatory immigration detention and support the policy) is taking a characteristically meaningless position: let’s keep the camps open and not change anything at all, but create new reporting requirements. We’ll keep abusing children but will at least fill out the forms correctly.
John Quiggin 08.12.16 at 2:07 am
Rob is right on all points. The same probably would have been true of the NT story, except that in this case there was actual video of teenage prisoners being hooded, beaten, chained to chairs and so on.
But even the Murdoch press has noted the discrepancy between Turnbull’s instant response in one case and refusal to do anything in the other
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/turnbull-resists-demands-to-call-nauru-inquiry/news-story/1bc44c4dac2ca20a8540aa30a201e499
J-D 08.12.16 at 2:19 am
That appears to be for subscribers only, but I’m guessing the point is similar to this one?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/12/don-dale-to-the-nauru-files-political-response-to-the-outrages-couldnt-be-more-different
ZM 08.12.16 at 2:37 am
I think its a difficult policy issue really.
The problem is global and there is no effective global dialogue on solving the problem. The UN called a World Humanitarian Summit which was on during the Australian election and Australia didn’t send political leaders from any of the major parties. No leaders from the USA, UK, Canada, or New Zealand went. Ireland had a representative. It looks like the Anglo countries all boycotted the summit to me. There were leaders from continental Europe, Asia, and Africa.
I think Australians would mostly agree to take more refugees in an orderly process if there was one.
There has been talk about a regional solution. I don’t think this is as good as a global solution. But I don’t know that other countries in the region are very sympathetic to Australia, since there are millions of refugees and displaced persons in our region in other countries, and Australia is complaining about a relatively very very small number of irregular boat arrivals. At the most I think it was a bit over 20,000 boat arrivals a year, so compared to numbers elsewhere it was very low even at the height.
I want offshore detention to end.
But I also find it difficult to think of a good policy the Australian government could have for refugees unless there was some sort of global policy development on the issue.
You would have to get buy in from a lot of countries, and from the refugees themselves as well.
Val 08.12.16 at 11:56 am
ZM – thanks for the information on the Humanitarian Summit, I was not aware of that. I agree we need a global response, but there already is a UN convention and a body (UNHCR), so it’s not as if we have to start from scratch. However if countries ignore it, it is hard to get a global solution.
Val 08.12.16 at 12:14 pm
There is a policy paper and open letter to the Prime Minister here, which academics can sign. (I’ve signed it, I guess I can call myself and academic even though I haven’t finished my PhD)
It is here https://academicsforrefugees.wordpress.com
I think it still leaves a few issues a bit too open but I think it is definitely worth signing.
Patricko 08.16.16 at 11:39 pm
Going back to the OP’s question, the ABC’s Media Watch program actually discussed exactly the issue of how much coverage the issue had got, and why, this Monday: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4520092.htm .
Their view was it was a combination of Rob’s point #20 (man bites dog) and the battle of old media over who led the story (IE the Guardian).
I should also mention it got a fairly decent run on one of our commercial channel’s combination current affairs and light entertainment programs, ‘The Project’. (Translating from the US, think of a more laid-back version of the Daily Show but with a fair bit more sport and backyard jokes around the BBQ style humour mixed in).
On the broader moral and philosophical issue …. I haven’t been an activist against these policies, so could be accused of being one of the ones participating in hiding this stuff away from my conscience. But I watched a program last night about the behaviour of the Stasi in enforced doping and total surveillance of athletes in East Germany, the former GDR … without being sensationalist, is what the Australian government is overseeing with these camps much different to that? Or for that matter, the early days of the Nazi regime in setting up the ghettos? And is there thus an equivalence of Germans in the 1930s who didn’t support the Nazis but turned a blind eye to the ghettos, and Australians today who don’t support the current government in many respects, but ignore these offshore camps?
I tend to agree with ZM that it’s a fiendishly difficult policy issue, but maybe these new reports can prove convincingly we’ve moved from a morally-dubious policy means justifying a populist end (“stopping the boats”) to outright state-supported morally repugnant activities that need to be changed.
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