Sarah Stephen
Asylum seekers held in the Australian-funded
detention centre on the Pacific island state of Nauru
suspended their hunger strike on January 8, due in part to
news of the Nauru government's request for an independent
Australian medical team to travel to the island.
According to the president of the Hazara Ethnic Society of
Australia, Hassan Ghulam, the 33 hunger strikers were also
“encouraged by the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees' [UNHCR] decision to review Afghan cases based on the
deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan”.
Nearly 300 people, mostly from Afghanistan, are being held
on Nauru under the federal Coalition government's
“Pacific solution” to “illegal” asylum
seekers.
Nauru is the jewel in the crown of the Australian
government's “Pacific solution”. The former British
colony's debt-ridden government was bribed and bullied with
tens of millions of dollars into agreeing to imprison more
than 1000 asylum seekers that the Australian government barred
from arriving on Australian soil.
Since September 19, 2001, and the arrival of the first
boatloads of asylum seekers on Nauru, the UNHCR agreed to
assess only a limited number of claims, concerned that its
further cooperation would give tacit approval to the
Australian government's widely condemned “Pacific
solution”. As a result, the majority of the asylum
seekers held on the island were processed by Australian
government officials.
On December 24, UN officials started reconsidering the 22
cases they had initially rejected, because “the security
and human rights situation in certain regions in Afghanistan
appears to be progressively and seriously deteriorating”.
“Some cases have already been assessed and the
elements appear to be there to warrant them being granted
asylum”, UNHCR spokesperson Ellen Hansen said on January
6. The reviews should be finished by early February.
Forty asylum seekers began a hunger strike on December 10,
International Human Rights Day, demanding that all of the
detained asylum seekers' cases be reviewed. The hunger
strikers were kept alive only by daily intravenous
rehydration. Four had sewn their lips together and were
planning to sew their eyes together if their calls for help
were not answered by January 10.
In the days before the decision to suspend the hunger
strike, political pressure on Canberra to act to save the
protesters' lives had been steadily mounting.
Australian newspapers gave wide coverage to the story filed
by Kim Ruscoe from New Zealand's Dominion Post.
Ruscoe and Dominion Post photograph Andrew Gorrie
visited Nauru in December posing as tourists and obtained
interviews with detained asylum seekers.
Cy Winter, the chief of mission in Nauru for the UN's
International Organisation for Migration, was incredulous when
he met Ruscoe and Gorrie, telling them “even two New
Zealand dignitaries who wanted to come here and visit the
refugees couldn't get in”.
“The detainees we spoke to, they believed that the
hunger strikers were near death”, Ruscoe told ABC TV's
7.30 Report on January 7. “They didn't think
they could last for more than a week to 10 days... I don't
sleep very much at night. I keep thinking about the guys on
the island and want to get them off.
“Let's process them properly. Let's give them an
interpreter of their own ethnic group, legal representation
and give them another go.”
In early January, the Nauruan authorities broke their usual
silence. In a January 6 press release, Nauruan finance
minister Kinza Clodumar charged that Australia had neglected
its humanitarian duties and broken its memorandum of
understanding with the Nauru government over the care of the
asylum seekers, which states that “health and medical
services, personnel, supplies and equipment will be provided
by Australia”.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) received a formal
request from the Nauru government for assistance on January 8,
and began to put together a team of volunteers to go to Nauru
carry out a comprehensive and independent review of the entire
provision of medical services on Nauru, as well as assessing
the condition of the hunger strikers.
“There is no shortage of doctors wanting to help the
asylum seekers, the Nauru government and the Australian
government to end this crisis”, AMA president Bill
Glasson declared on January 8. “With news that foreign
minister Alexander Downer is planning to send senior officials
to Nauru to monitor the situation it is appropriate that the
medical team be part of the delegation.”
Glasson urged Australian immigration minister Amanda
Vanstone “to accept the voluntary help of the medical
profession to end this crisis and to provide appropriate
health care to the asylum seekers”.
With the hunger strike suspended, the government clearly
felt that the pressure was off and began to block the AMA's
initiative. The January 10 Sydney Morning Herald
reported that a spokesperson for Downer said space would not
be available for the AMA team on an aircraft the Australian
government is to charter on January 12 to send its own
evaluation team, including two doctors, to Nauru.
The government has also ruled out any funding of the AMA
team's trip. Because the regular plane service to Nauru is out
of action for a week, the AMA team will have to charter their
own plane.
There are rumours of enormous diplomatic pressure being put
on the Nauruan government by Vanstone's office not to issue
visas to the AMA team.
According to Ghulam, the asylum seekers were desperately
waiting for the AMA team's visit but, even if it failed to
come, he believed they would continue to suspend their hunger
strike until the end of January to give the immigration
department a chance to review their cases.
The use of Nauru as a dumping ground for asylum seekers has
allowed the Australian government to keep the desperate plight
of detained asylum seekers out of public scrutiny. Canberra
has done everything it can to keep tight control over the flow
of information from Nauru.
For much of the past year, the desperate plight of the 284
mostly Afghan asylum seekers, including 93 children, has
remained well hidden. Lawyers, journalists, human rights
advocates and independent medical observers have been barred
from visiting the island.
The hunger strike, however, brought the plight of the Nauru
asylum seekers back into the media spotlight, and was
extremely embarrassing for Canberra.
The asylum seekers imprisoned on Nauru are faced with an
impossible choice — a death sentence in Afghanistan or a
life sentence on Nauru. The 45 who originally went on hunger
strike were expressing a desperate cry for help, using the
only “bargaining chip” they had — their lives.
If the Australian government doesn't give the asylum seekers a
fair hearing when their claims are reassessed, there is every
possibility that the hunger strike will resume.
From Green Left Weekly, January 14, 2004.
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