Refugees who have been settled on the Pacific island of Nauru under Australia’s offshore asylum policy have told the Guardian in covert interviews of their deep sense of helplessness, and fear of Nauruans who resent their presence.



Since May, more than 400 people who were detained after trying to arrive in Australia by boat have been found to be refugees and released into an island population of less than 10,000. Their arrival has convulsed Nauruan society and there is growing antipathy towards them.

Graffiti scrawled on the side of a shipping container has been altered in an attempt to hide the original meaning. Some of the Nauru locals have a strong animosity towards refugees. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

They live in several guarded camps dotted around the island. Their cramped quarters provide the basics, but little more. In the following interviews they describe a monotonous and unsafe existence devoid of hope. Many are escaping through a heavy regimen of sleeping pills. Depression is ubiquitous.

The refugees’ future is uncertain. The Nauruan government has given them five-year visas; Australia has said they will never be allowed to settle there.

Tony Abbott’s government has pursued the policy vigorously, but the Australian stance is essentially bipartisan. It was the former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd who made the announcement that still defines Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers: “Arriving in Australia by boat will no longer mean settlement in Australia,” he said before the 2013 election (in which Abbott eventually trounced him). Rudd’s policy drew criticism from the UN’s refugee agency who warned the policy was likely to harm the “physical and psycho-social wellbeing of transferees”.

Nauru is one of the smallest countries in the world, home to less than 10,000 people. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

The date Rudd made his speech, 19 July, 2013, has become notorious among asylum seekers – an arbitrary marker of the capricious immigration politics that has left them in limbo. Many have family or friends who left Indonesia days before them and are now settled in Australia.

The policy achieved its goals. The boats to Australia have (mostly) stopped. But not without a cost.

The following interviews were conducted in the refugees’ accommodation on Nauru while local security guards slept outside. Nauru has effectively banned foreign journalists, making it difficult for refugees to explain their plight, or for the Australian public to scrutinise the consequences of its government’s immigration policy.

All names have been changed to protect the refugees. The refugees pictured have covered their faces for safety, not for religious reasons.

Amineh

Amineh has struggled with mental health problems since arriving in Nauru. After a period in a Brisbane psychiatric ward she was sent back to Nauru against a doctor’s recommendation. Within three days of being sent back she had fallen back into crisis. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

Amineh’s family fled Iran after her husband told a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that he held political and religious views that were contrary to the country’s authoritarian Shia government.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer during her 18-month incarceration on Nauru. She also developed acute depression. After successful cancer surgery in Brisbane she was admitted to the psychiatric ward of Brisbane’s Toowong private hospital in a “flat, non-reactive” state. After a month’s treatment she was cleared for release with a letter from her doctor advising she should not be returned to Nauru.



“Given the severity of her illness, [Amineh] is a significantly high risk of relapse with further risks to herself (such as emaciation/starvation, significant decline in personal hygiene, disrupted relationships with her husband and children and passive suicidal ideation which may well escalate into active suicidal ideation)... should she return to the immigration detention centre at Nauru.”

The letter was ignored.

I didn’t want to live in this world any more. I don’t want to be alive the next day. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to open my eyes. No hope. Disappointed. Even I couldn’t bear my family. My children, my husband. I didn’t want to see them. I couldn’t bear to hear them. I was embarrassed in front of my children because I felt guilty because I did something horrible to my children [by bringing them to Australia]. My doctor in Brisbane tried to help me. He tried to give me hope again. He forced me to exercise. He made me like life again. He said ‘I will send immigration a letter. I won’t allow them to send you back to Nauru’. One day in the hospital, 5am, [immigration officers] knocked on the door. They said that you can go inside the camp, you should go back to Nauru. And then that made me mad and that made me crazy. I spoke to immigration, I begged them. I told them my situation. I showed them my letter. But they said nothing. They forced me get in a plane and get back to Nauru. When I arrived again in Nauru, for two days I was better because I saw my old friends and that was not bad. But after three days, I got back to my bad days. My sickness was returned. They isolated me in a room. The doctor was so scared. He didn’t know what to do with me. I had shivers and my hands shook. I was dreaming that someone was trying to smother me. I couldn’t breathe. After a week they released us into the community. I locked myself up into this room. I spend all my time in this room and I have nowhere to go. I feel like I’m not a normal person. I’m like a machine. The medicine made me act like a machine. If I don’t have my medicine, I’m terrible.

Hawo

Hawo said she was attacked twice in the days before she was interviewed by the Guardian. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

Hawo and 10 other Somali women live in Anibare camp on Nauru. Without the protection of men, they are vulnerable both inside and outside the detention system. Most have experienced sexual or physical violence while on Nauru.

In the detention centre, there was direct and indirect sexual assault. Because the security, the Wilsons* and the locals, they bring stuff for you. The stuff that’s really important like shoes and then they start bargaining with you. ‘When you get accepted as a refugee you’re going to have sex with me and I’m going to enjoy with you.’ And actually you need these things but you can never promise them. Because of this we knew that outside [detention] would not be safe and we expressed to the immigration this feeling. Three days ago I was going to get my financial support. There was a motorcycle going along the road and he grabbed me and threw me on to the road. The next day I was going to the supermarket. A guy came face to face with me and tried to grab my hands. He wanted to give me a hug. I think he wanted to rape me. I screamed and he jumped on a motorcycle. I came from my home country due to rape and torture but this stuff still exists here.

* The Australian company Wilson Security is contracted to maintain order in the centres.



Annisa

Annisa told authorities she did not feel safe in the community in Nauru and wanted to return to the detention centre, but was told it was not possible as it was only for asylum seekers. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

Annisa is another Somali woman who came to Australia alone. She and the women she shares Anibare camp with say Nauruan men sneak around the back of the camp at night and knock on their windows. They sleep in jeans to make it harder to be raped.

I never had a life in Somalia. My husband was killed and my baby boy was taken away. I was kidnapped for five years by the Al-Shabaab militia. They wanted to cut my hand off because they wanted me to marry but I refused. I stayed five years with them and then I escaped. I came to search for a new life. But I am in fear. At what time will the local men break into my room? My body is here but my mind is not. I think back to my husband and my kid and think of how I have been treated. I’m tired of crying. All the time at the moment I cry. Because there is no safety in Somalia and there is no safety here in Nauru too. I expressed to the [Australian] immigration that I don’t feel safe in Nauru: ‘Let me stay in the [detention] camp because the camp, at least, is better than outside.’ They said: ‘You’ll never be returned to the camp. The camp is for asylum seekers, you’ll stay here five years.’ You can never imagine how people live here. Sometimes we are unable to buy drinking water and so we drink the bathroom water. Three days ago I had a stomach problem. Sometimes I run out of money for food and I don’t eat for days. Everything is expensive**. You can imagine $180 for two weeks, it is not enough.

** A 1 litre bottle of water costs $2-3 in Nauru, where the average maximum temperature is around 30C. Refugees live on an allowance of about $12 a day.

Ali

Ali and his wife Khorvash sleep in a bunk bed in their room in Anibare camp. Photograph: Remi Chauvin/The Guardian

Ali and his wife Khorvash came from Ahwaz in southern Iran. They were released from detention four months ago and live in the Anibare refugee camp.

I really have problems with opening my eyes. I normally wake up at nine and I pretend that I’m asleep till 11 sometimes 12. I start to ask God for help for two or three hours and when there is no response from God I get up and say ‘OK there is no God, let’s get up’. My wife and I are not going out much. We are not even talking to each other much. We are just like ghosts. Sometimes we watch TV. Yeah, that’s it. I really don’t know what I’m doing during the day. I contemplated suicide millions of times. I didn’t have enough courage to do it because I’m a Muslim and unfortunately there is only one unforgiven sin in my religion and that is committing suicide. I’m ready to give them a signature for giving me a verdict like execution or something. I’m really happy if the Australian government kills me. Even if you have the best psychologist in the world, he can’t help you. In the best scenario, you’ll meet someone who has a sense of sympathy for you and is trying to help you. But this is still five years in Nauru, with or without the shrink. When I wanted to leave my country, my dad told me not to do it. He said: ‘Democracy and human rights is a joke. No one will respect you in Australia or any other western country. Stay here and die with honour.’ And I told him: ‘No Dad, you don’t know anything about these things, let me try.’ I did. And I find that my father was right. Nauru is another part of our conviction. This is jail. Even God can’t help you here.

Benjamin



Nineteen-year-old Benjamin was released from detention in November and now lives with his father and two sisters (aged 13 and 15) in the newly built Nibok camp. Their mother is still in Iran. While they were in detention Benjamin’s father, Haji, was charged with assault and placed in solitary custody after a scuffle with a security guard.

My father got a stroke when he was in custody. He was paralysed on his left side. They sent him alone to Darwin. I was 18 at the time and my sisters were both minors but they left us in the camp and my sisters they got lots of problems. They couldn’t sleep at night. I couldn’t control this. It’s lots of pressure. My father was somewhere else. I was trying to talk to the Wilsons because my sisters were crying all the night. One day I went [to the Australian immigration department psychologist]. I was so angry because my sisters weren’t in a good situation. They needed to know what’s happening to my father because we just saw him once after he come out from the custody. I warned them that if they don’t at least tell me how my father is, I will suicide. And she laughs at me and says ‘do what you want, no one will stop you’. And I cut my wrists. I couldn’t control it anymore, it was too much for me. I didn’t do it for protest. I was trying to kill myself. I wasn’t in control of the situation. I wasn’t that much adult to take care of my sisters and try to motivate my father to get healthy and try to control the awful situation of the camp. I just wanted to die. I tried to do it silently. So I cut it and I was feeling dizzy and my sisters came and saw there was lots of blood and they called the Wilsons. When my father came back he was placed back in jail. He was still paralysed on his left side. We kept having to go to the court but in the end they found that my father wasn’t guilty. Now I don’t care if something’s going to happen for the future or if I go to Australia. I don’t have any plans for my future right now because I still feel that I’m captured. I still feel that I’m not human after a year-and-a-half. I just need to get my freedom first and then I’ll try to find my way somehow.



