Last week Nauru cut off access to Facebook. First they denied it, then when Facebook confirmed the block they conceeded that some social media sites may have been blocked "temporarily" as part of a pornography crackdown. As for the real reason? Australia and refugees, of course:
A ban on Facebook in Nauru was implemented at the request of the Australian Government to assist its Cambodian resettlement policy, a refugee advocacy group says, citing an anonymous source.
[...]
Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said that one of her contacts within the Nauruan community told her the Australian Government was behind the ban.
"My contacts are telling me that this was done at the request of the Australian Government," Ms Curr told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program.
"They said that the Australian Government is anxious to get a group of people going to Cambodia and they are concerned that the people on Nauru are in contact with advocates in Australia who they believe are talking them out of the Cambodian option."
So, Australia decides that its plans to illegally render refugees to yet another country would go easier if people couldn't organise to oppose it, and requests that freedom of speech be limited in Nauru. And the Nauruan government, like obedient little lapdogs, complies. Just another example of how Australia's Pacific gulag policy has destroyed Nauru's democracy.
