“Don’t worry about me teacher, I am rubbish”, “Why do they [Australians] hate us?”, “Do they know we are here?”, “I am nothing”. These words were addressed to me by adolescent and adult asylum seeker and refugee students during my 15 months as a teacher at the Nauru Regional Processing Centre. Besides the way they were treated and the conditions in the camp, this sense of worthlessness was also fuelled by how the refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru were portrayed in the Australian media.

It was largely for this reason I agreed to participate in the Four Corners story on Monday as the story brief was to humanise those hidden from view, to allow my students to tell their own stories in their own words.

And this is what Four Corners did. Remote interviews were conducted with the students with a teacher present for each interview. We were in the studio, while the students were simultaneously filmed on Nauru as we communicated via speaker phone. The students were not “coached” beforehand, not even provided with questions.

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When Navid agreed to do the interview he messaged me: “We should have the questions before the interview”. I replied: “Just be yourselves. Talk about what the last three years have been like. How you feel. What you want from the future. It’s more like a conversation than an interview”.

I am happy to provide screenshots of all my communications with the kids prior to the interview, relaying the same message. This is why the teachers were present, so the students would feel more comfortable and be themselves, and that they were.

From the overwhelming response I’ve received, people in Australia were amazed to see these bright, “normal” young people articulating their painful experiences. The kids themselves were amazed. Shamim watched the program on a phone with all her family: mother, granny, great-granny, two uncles and great-uncle. They all cried. “They are so proud!” Shamim texted. And well they should be.

Many people on Nauru have harrowing stories to tell, but they cannot share them. Some cannot get out of bed, let alone turn up at a pre-allocated time for an interview. Some are too vulnerable and at risk to speak. Some are so medicated they cannot string a sentence together. Shamim, Navid, Hossein, Misbah and Batol bravely spoke for them all; spoke of their fears for their safety, their lost years, and uncertain futures. Many other people on Nauru, not involved in the program, have sent me effusive messages of thanks for sharing “their” story.

But the Australian government has responded ferociously to “their” story, attacking the ABC for what it claimed was biased reporting. The government is used to controlling the narrative, writing the story and dictating the Nauru script.

Refugees speaking for themselves is not in that script because that would give the impression that they are real people, with real hopes, suffering real pain. The Nauruan government’s response was similarly dehumanising. Refugees couldn’t possible think for themselves, they were coached, it claimed.

Both governments have been able to control the public discussion over the people held on Nauru by keeping them isolated from the media through the $8,000 non-refundable application fee for Nauru media visas. This decision means the Australian government and the two media outlets with approved Nauruan visas, the Australian newspaper and A Current Affair, are the only ones free to tell stories about those on Nauru.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has portrayed detainees as illiterate and innumerate, but many of my students held degrees. He said on Tuesday that many refugees on Nauru would choose to remain there permanently to get an education for their children. Dutton has not spoken to any refugees on Nauru and I know hundreds of them, all of them desperate to leave. And as Four Corners noted, the majority of refugee and asylum seeker children on Nauru are not getting an education.

Dutton has also accused us of doing the children a disservice by not encouraging them to accept “the package” and go home. All the children featured on Four Corners are refugees which, by definition, means they cannot go home.

The prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, stated that many of the children on Nauru are there because their parents are security risks, i.e. terrorists. Considering the majority of those children have been found to be refugees, along with their parents, that’s another intentional red herring. Most of those on Nauru are there because they have fled extremist regimes.

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Then there is the economic migrant misnomer. The government itself releases the statistics on refugee status determinations so knows irrefutably that this is not the case. Quite the opposite actually, as many formerly affluent Iranian refugees were forced to flee due to political persecution because they are Christian, Arabic, gay, or opposed to Sharia law. Now they have nothing.

There’s also the claim that the RPCs are now “open centres”. Asylum seekers are not permitted to work, are not permitted access to money (even though they may have money stored in property, confiscated when they were detained), are not permitted smart phones, and are not permitted to take any food out of the camp. Yes they are free to come and go, but they are not free.

Media allowed on the island have criticised the asylum seekers and refugees for protesting behind the fences when they are not confined by those fences. Protesting in public has been illegal in Nauru since a new law was passed in March 2015. Subsequently, more than 100 refugees were arrested. So yes, they can theoretically peacefully protest outside the wire, but they will be arrested.

On Wednesday night, A Current Affair – one of two media organisations to have received a golden ticket to report on Nauru – were back busily exposing “the truth” as they claimed that the Four Corners program was based on the Amnesty International report released this week. No, the program was based on the children on Nauru, supported by the accounts of people, including one member of Amnesty, who had spent much longer on Nauru than any favoured media organisation and certainly more than Dutton or Turnbull. The latter never having been to Nauru.

So when I was approached by Four Corners to participate in a program aimed at giving a voice to the voiceless, I agreed. I agreed because I am sick of the lies that direct the prevailing narrative about those on Nauru. I agreed because I know if they are not resettled somewhere safe soon, more people will die from hopelessness.

I also agreed because I thought that if the Australian people could just see these kids, hear their voices, they would care about them too, care enough to save their lives.

• Tracey Donehue is an ESL teacher who worked at the Nauru Regional Processing Centre from 2014 to 2015.