BY SARAH STEPHEN

In early June, BBC reporter Sarah Macdonald and Australian refugee supporter Kate Durham secretly filmed the conditions under which of asylum seekers are being held on Nauru. The footage will be included in a BBC documentary to be screened in September.

Macdonald and Durham were able to avoid the visa restrictions being imposed on many Australians wanting to visit Nauru by making a 10-day trip, via New Zealand and other islands.

The June 22 Age reported that Durham was shocked by what she saw. “She said 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. She said millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers' money were being wasted building facilities on an island incapable of sustaining its own population.”

“The whole place is a perversion. There are more Australians and internationals there than Nauruans, and they are like carrion feeders”, Durham told the Age.

The Age reported: “Durham said there was a `hatred of Australians and whites' by Nauruans who resented the outsiders `grinding a living out of the detainees'. `I talked to Australian tradesmen who boasted they were earning $5000 a week but they had to be secretive because they had to sign confidentiality agreements.'”<|>

From Green Left Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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