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\u201cI had said I wasn\u2019t going to write no more poems like this
\nI made a mistake\u201d
\nGil Scott-Heron<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the headline read: \u201cWhat is our future?\u2019: the Nauru detention centre was empty. Now 100 asylum seekers are held there<\/a>\u201d. We\u2019re ba-a-a-ack<\/a>! Not haunted by supernatural beings, but rather by our own supposedly democratic natures that insist on greeting those who need help by treating them as just so much garbage, dumping them anywhere but here. In this instance, the anywhere is Nauru. Nauru, which closed for all of two minutes is up and running, and not running again.<\/p>\n At the end of June 2023, Human Rights Watch reported<\/a>, \u201cOver the\u00a0weekend<\/a>, the last\u00a0refugee\u00a0held on the island country of Nauru under the Australian government\u2019s abusive offshore processing policy was finally evacuated to\u00a0Australia. Despite the good news, the Australian government\u00a0remains committed<\/a>\u00a0to its unlawful and expensive policy of offshore processing of asylum seekers. In this year\u2019s budget, the government\u00a0allocated<\/a>\u00a0AU$1.5 billion (US$1 billion) over the next four years to fund offshore operations.\u201d After eleven years, the immigration processing center, which processed almost no one, was finally closed, that place which both Human Rights Watch and M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res described as a place of “indefinite despair” and “sustained abuse”, descriptions which were documented and, tragically, repeated year in and year out, from 2011 on. Finally, that particular site of abuse and despair was empty.<\/p>\n Or was it? If Nauru was closed, what was Australia allocating a billion US dollars for? In July 2023, the BBC asked the same question, and their answer, in a word, was deterrence<\/a>. The fact that researchers have repeatedly found that offshore processing has little to no effect on maritime arrivals. Why would Australia, and Australia is just an example here of an attitude and policy shared by many so-called receiving countries, invest so much money in a policy that doesn\u2019t work? Indefinite despair.<\/p>\n In September, Nauru greeted the first \u201cnew\u201d batch of asylum seekers. This month already, 37 have arrived. If history is any indication, they will spend years there. Medical care on Nauru is limited, at best, when there\u2019s any care at all: \u201cThere is no dedicated torture and trauma counselling available to asylum seekers<\/a>, and specialist care \u2013 such as ear nose and throat, eye, renal, and hearing specialists \u2013 are not available.\u201d Why would someone fleeing \u201csevere persecution\u201d of all sorts need or want torture or trauma counselling?<\/p>\n Since 2013, we\u2019ve written repeatedly about the cruelty and routine torture taking place at Nauru. That\u2019s what a billion US dollars buys, for four years at least, a house of cruelty, a camp of despair. In 2012, Marianne Evers, a trained counsellor and a nurse with more than 40 years\u2019 experience<\/a>, signed up to work for six weeks at Nauru. She lasted three weeks. In 2013, speaking of Nauru, she said, \u201cI actually liken it to a concentration camp<\/a>.\u201d Not surprisingly, the Australian government took offense at the likening, \u201cI think invoking concentration camp is a disgrace.\u201d Calling the camp on Nauru Island a \u201cconcentration camp\u201d was a disgrace, but the camp itself \u2026 was just fine. And it still is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (By Dan Moshenberg)<\/p>\n