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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