Sarah Stephen
An independent medical team calling itself the Professional Alliance for the Health of Asylum Seekers and their Children, which had been raising money to make a trip to Nauru on January 19, was forced to suspend its trip when the Nauruan government withdrew its earlier request for an independent medical team to visit.
The team intended to provide health care to 45 asylum seekers held at the Australian-financed detention centre on the Pacific island who had staged a 29-day hunger strike ending on January 8.
There was bitter disappointment among the doctors involved, and a suspicion that the backdown reflected behind-the-scenes political pressure from the Australian government, which is deeply concerned about preventing sympathetic information about asylum seekers on Nauru from reaching the Australian public.
There appears, however, to be dissent within the government of Nauru. On January 15, Nauran finance minister Kinza Clodumar expressed caution at Australia's offer to improve Nauru's medical services. He still wants an independent medical team from the Australian Medical Association to go to Nauru to assess their health system.
Clodumar told Radio Australia on January 15 that he would be saddened if Australia's offer of assistance was contingent upon preventing doctors from making an independent assessment of the medical condition of the asylum seekers.
According to Greg Barns from the refugee group A Just Australia, the Nauruan government had even gone as far as agreeing to pay for the doctors' airfares just days before its apparent change of heart.
On January 14, Dr Rohan Vora, a Queensland GP who was to be part of the medical team, accused the Howard government of political pressure and interference. According to Vora, Nauru's acting director of medical services, Kieren Keke made the official request for the independent delegation and was initially keen to talk to the doctors, but will no longer return their calls. This alone, in Vora's view, indicates political pressure.
Vora told ABC Radio's AM program on January 15: "With pressure from the Australian government, who obviously are the major funders of it through their foreign aid program ... Keke is going to have a lot of pressure put on him to keep everything very closed, rather than have a transparent and independently reviewable medical service."
In a January 14 note to refugee supporters, Vora wrote: "We are currently all devastated by the news [of Nauru's withdrawn invitation] as it would seem that we came very close to having the beginnings of an independent medical service offered on Nauru for asylum seekers. This type of service does not exist in any of the IDCs [immigration detention centres] in Australia to date, to our great shame as health professionals and citizens who have let this type of 'social experiment' flourish in our midst.
"Many doctors are now colluding in the maintenance of an inhumane and non-reviewable denial of basic health rights ... to immigration detainees.
"The health system for immigration detainees is subcontracted out by [the department of immigration], not even to the department of health and ageing but to various non-medical bodies (International Organisation for Migration, Group 4, etc.) who are not signed up to any transparent ethical medical guidelines, or even any desire to have these health facilities properly accredited and reviewable by the usual medical review boards. This is a very sad state of affairs in our post-Nuremberg nation."
The doctors' alliance will continue to call on Canberra to put medical services on Nauru under the supervision of Australia's chief medical officer and internationally accredited experts. They also want an independent body to monitor the health of asylum seekers and to transmit their various concerns to the Australian government.
From Green Left Weekly, January 21, 2004.
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