Nauru: sifting truth from spin

The lack of access to Nauru plays into the hands of unscrupulous activists.

Sifting truth from spin

Nauru has become a vortex of political and personal agendas conspiring to mask the truth.

Even simple facts and obvious realities can be difficult to discern or expose. Happiness is disguised, secrets are kept, identities are hidden, allegations are made and politics are played.

And if the reality of Nauru is difficult to discern from the island itself, the misconceptions and distortions from Australia are extreme.

The Nauruan government, dismayed by inaccurate and tendentious reporting, has kept overseas journalists out for years. Maligned with labels such as “prison island” “guano heap” or “rape culture”, Nauru’s defensiveness might be understandable. But secrecy only makes the situation worse.

I was the first Australian journalist allowed in for almost two years; and with no outsiders coming in, all that gets out is complaints designed to undermine offshore processing. Refugee advocates and journalists run anonymous and unverified stories.

Eating breakfast last week at an island cafe, the television is turned to ABC News 24. It runs an item about Nauru, including comments from Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs talking about “detention” centres.

This is jarring when right opposite the cafe refugees are operating a car wash.

There is no longer any detention on the island; refugees and asylum-seekers either live in the community or in centres from which they can come and go as they please.

After hearing about tough conditions and alleged abuse in Nauru for years it is confronting to suddenly find yourself inside one of the centres, surrounded by children, women and men eager for your attention.

Child abuse won’t leap out at you but the zest and health of the children, the openness of the parents, and the first-name exchanges they have with the guards provide reassurance. Medicos confirm they look out for abuse and that previously they have changed the accommodation of some children to remove perceived risks.

The children tend to have excellent English, so provide a window into the true feelings of families; I am befriended by nine, 10 and 11-year-olds acting as de facto translators.

The topsy-turvy reality of Nauru means that over coming days my greatest concern — one that I take up with the Nauruan and Australian governments — is that too many children are choosing to stay in the centres during the day rather than leave to attend school.

It is not children being detained that strikes me as the pressing welfare problem, but their refusal to take daily opportunities to leave.

Refugees are taking up jobs around the island and when I hear about some Iranians opening a restaurant, we track it down. Persian Gold is rustic by our standards but a clean, colourful and tasty restaurant run by brother and sister refugees, Mehdi and Sanaz.

Initially they are pleased to meet and hear of our interest in a story — what small business doesn’t grab the opportunity for free publicity? But soon their reluctance is clear. We order dinner, take a table next to a Nauruan policeman, and talk it through.

Mehdi’s initial concern is about showing his face, as he remains fearful of the Iranian government; not a problem, we can organise a photo without showing faces.

But there is an even more palpable resistance: “We don’t want to seem happy,” says Mehdi.

Although proud of what they’ve done, they don’t want refugee life to appear bearable.

This reflects their true feelings, because they do not want to be in Nauru; they have a brother in Adelaide and dream of joining him.

But there is also peer-group pressure at play which becomes all too evident when photographer Kelly Barnes takes them outside for a picture of the pair sharing a high five to celebrate their achievement.

Another refugee arrives on a motorbike and starts a tense discussion in Farsi. It is over in a few minutes and he leaves. Mehdi and Sanaz are now sullen.

They explain this man was not a friend but another refugee who happened to ride by and wanted to warn them not to look so pleased with themselves for the media.

We promise not to use the high-five shot.

Sanaz, in her early 30s, becomes emotional and shares her worries about making the restaurant work. They’ve been open for five months.

She also talks about seeing her chances of marrying and having children slipping away.

“This small island is not a good place to live,” she says. “It is OK for the locals because they are used to it — I don’t really know what my future is.”

Yet clearly, making the best of a bad situation is even tougher when others are on hand to decry it.

A similar exchange occurs later that night when I chat with Iranian refugees at one of Nauru’s better restaurants. They plug their iPhone into the sound system and turn the outside deck into a Persian dance club.

They intermingle with Australia’s high commissioner to Nauru. We talk and laugh — an Iranian refugee has perfected a mocking ocker “maaaaate” — but they implore me not to write that they are happy. They are not, of course. They are trapped.

“Goodbye maaaaate,” my Iranian friend smiles as I leave and wish him luck.

But having to apologise for every enjoyable Nauru moment can only increase the stress.

One of the island medicos tells me a critical factor in mental health is coming to the realisation that Australia is no longer an option.

Those who still hold out hope — encouraged by Australian advocates and activists — of forcing Australia into accepting them remain agitated and distressed, I am told. Those who realise that prime goal is lost are apparently more resigned about accepting the next best option. “I think what adds to the tension,” says Nauru’s Justice Minister David Adeang, “is that a number of them still haven’t accepted the fact that Australia is no longer a settlement option for them.”

While every asylum-seeker or refugee is a compelling human story of past tragedy, current trauma and future uncertainty, each is also a competing campaign for the ultimate goal of resettlement in Australia.

Riots, fires and protests have tried to change Australian policy — to no avail. Allegations of violence and rape are fed to the media — often the ABC — where they are run uncritically. Some are factual, others are plausible, while some cases have been investigated and found to be baseless.

Finding a pretext for being taken to Australia is a possible lifeline. Already 233 asylum-seekers and refugees from Nauru have been flown to our shores for medical procedures and have claimed asylum. They remain in Australia as their claims are processed, waiting to see whether they will be sent back to Nauru.

This is the context of the controversy around Abyan (not her real name), the 23-year-old Somalian woman who alleges she was raped and was flown to Sydney for a pregnancy termination. She baulked and delayed when the procedure was offered and was flown back to Nauru.

This coincided with my visit to Nauru — six months in the planning — and although we had plenty on our plate, it would have been an abrogation of my duty, given the claims and controversies, not to try and find Abyan to get her side of the story. No doubt the Nauruan and Australian governments would have been relieved if I had ignored the issue.

It is also likely that the refugee advocates who have spread lies about my interaction with Abyan would have been the first to attack me if I had not tried to find her, check on her welfare and provide her with an opportunity to talk.

Remember, it is refugee advocates and lawyers who put Abyan’s allegations, condition and desire for a termination into the public domain earlier this month in a campaign to get the government to take her to Australia.

Over the years, like most journalists, I have had to talk to a wide variety of people in terrible situations — parents who have lost children to accidents or murders, people who are dying, in fear for their lives, who have lost everything and, yes, people who have been assaulted, even sexually. It is never pleasant. But calmness and decency are what counts.

(Journalists often interview victims of sexual assault; our media has been full of such accounts for the past couple of years in particular, leading to journalism awards and a royal commission.)

I found Abyan by asking other refugees. I knocked on the door. Abyan’s initial response was to refer me to her Sydney lawyer, ­George Newhouse, and give me his number.

I told her the controversy was generating a lot of news in Australia and that I would rather hear her thoughts and answers directly.

Her roommate, another Somalian woman who didn’t wish to reveal her name, joined the conversation. They were concerned and uncertain. They asked me in and offered me a chair. It was clear they were in constant contact with people in Australia and were torn between their own judgments and the advice they were being given.

We had a 10-minute conversation which I reported in the following day’s newspaper. I also reported news relayed to me later in the day that Abyan had gone to the island hospital complaining the media visit had made her feel increasingly unwell (this step may well have been suggested by Australian advocates, I don’t know, but — importantly — Abyan was soon back home).

My report also mentioned advice from the Nauruan police, confirming they had not received a complaint about the alleged rape, and that given the publicity, they would seek a statement from Abyan.

So we were on the lookout for Abyan going to the police station or officers going to her house and when we saw them there, we waited for their visit to conclude and I knocked on her door again.

Abyan and her roommate were distressed and the discussion centred on whether they should provide a photo of Abyan, disguising her identity. This is standard media practice that requires an element of trust. When I explained to Abyan she could step out of her hut with her back to the road and the photographer would take a picture from behind her, she voluntarily did so.

During our conversation at one stage Abyan said she had someone on the phone who wanted to talk to me. I took the phone and heard a woman identify herself as Abyan’s friend and ask me to leave.

Standing outside the front door — I did not go inside that day — I told the woman, whom I now know to be refugee advocate Pamela Curr, that Abyan was an adult and I would take my instructions from her.

Soon afterwards, Abyan said she had nothing more to say, so I wished her well and left.

The reason I have detailed these straightforward events is to highlight the outright lies promulgated by Curr back in Australia, repeated incessantly on social media by all sorts of people, including many who ought to know better.

Disgracefully, Curr accused me of “forcing” my way into Abyan’s house, of working with police and refusing to leave when I was asked. Curr issued these lies when she was more than 4000km away and could not have known what went on. She persisted with them even after I called her to tell her of the gross errors in her account.

This is how the politics of border protection can operate: lies instead of facts, abuse instead of solutions.

What Abyan needs is medical counselling to decide what is best for her, and the government to assist her in that course of action. All the rest is people playing politics.

Yet Curr’s lies were even taken up and played into the mainstream media by The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tom Allard. He had put the claims to me and received my clear response — his only first-hand account — yet favoured Curr’s invented version.

Allard also gave the impression I had somehow arrived with or acted in concert with the police — idiotic as that might sound — before adding my version of events, couched as denials, later in his story. Tacky stuff.

Such journalism, in cahoots with activists, could hardly do any more damage to the asylum-seekers and refugees in Nauru or the reputation of the country if they were on the island.

Nauru would do better to let them in — perhaps on condition they stay a while — so they cannot avoid the facts entirely.