Last week we learned that Australia's "Pacific solution" had sunk to a new level of horror: systematic sexual abuse. Refugees, including children, had been forced to expose themselves to guards in exchange for showers, offered drugs for sex, forced to have sex for the entertainment of guards, and threatened with rape. The Australian government's response was swift: they dismissed the claims as a fabrication, and announced that 10 Save the Children staff would be deported from Nauru and investigated for leaking official information.
Of course, he lied, and his government's own documents show it:
Guardian Australia has obtained, from a number of sources, minutes of welfare meetings and a Transfield intelligence report, which detail some of the child protection and abuse concerns in Nauru camps.There's a lot more, and its unpleasant stuff. But it shows convincingly that this is a real problem, not a fabrication - and that the Australian government has known about it for some time, but done nothing about it, instead preferring to cover it up to protect their policy and their reputation. And that is absolutely vile.
Those documents show, in the week beginning 2 June:
- A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide with a razor after being told he was not allowed access to the internet.
- A 16-year-old girl who told her case workers she had been tormented and sexually harassed by detention centre security guards. The girl reported a number of male Nauruan employees “have tried to hug her, kiss her, told her they would marry her and asked her to have a ‘sexy party’”.
- A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide by strangling himself...
A government which covers up child abuse does not deserve to be a government anymore. Its that simple. Throw the fuckers out.
