End Days for Australia’s Nauru Detention Center?

The Australian government was expected to begin the process of removing all remaining asylum seekers from the island of Nauru by the end of June, more than a decade after the offshore processing on the tiny Pacific Island was restarted. As Human Rights Watch noted, “few other countries go to such lengths to deliberately inflict suffering on people seeking safety and freedom.” The Howard government began offshore processing in Nauru after the Tampa crisis in 2001, which saw a Norwegian ship – the Tampa – rescue refuges bound for Australia. Human Rights Watch described the situation as “atrocious.” It said that asylum seekers and refugees “routinely face neglect by health workers and other service providers who have been hired by the Australian government, as well as frequent unpunished assaults by local Nauruans. “Anything less than the same approach in relation to PNG is a profound failure of people whose dire circumstances were caused by this policy and whose lives remain in the Australian government’s hands.” Like Nauru, Manus Island saw abuse and violence inflicted on the people housed there. “Every person sent to Nauru or PNG has lost years of their lives and been separated from loved ones because of the intentionally punitive policies of successive Australian governments,” he said.