Immigration department delivers three boxes of mail to barrister Julian Burnside – six months after he was assured it was being distributed to detainees

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Thousands of goodwill letters sent by Australians to immigration detainees held on Nauru have been returned unopened.

The letters of comfort and support were organised by the Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside. He did the same in 2001 after asylum seekers on the Tampa were detained for long periods.

Last year, with the support of advocacy and social justice groups, he organised for almost 2,000 letters from Australians to be sent to detainees on Nauru. A similar number were sent to people at the processing centre on Manus Island.

The letters were directed to people whose identity and boat number are known to Burnside. Each letter contained a self-addressed stamped envelope so the detainees could reply to the sender if they wished.

The letters were designed to let the detainees know that Australians were thinking of them, that they were not alone and that not everyone is hostile to refugees.

By the middle of last year it was apparent that the letter writers had not received any replies from Nauru.

Burnside followed up with an email inquiry to Nikki Keirven, then the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s lead service delivery officer at the Nauru offshore processing centre. On 25 June 2014 she replied:

“Thank you for your email. I appreciate you have an interest in knowing whether the letters you have been sending are arriving in Nauru.

“I can confirm that they are arriving and are being distributed to transferees by the service provider [Transfield Services]. This is a work in progress given that letters continue to arrive.

There are also a number of letters which have arrived for transferees who have departed Nauru. Where forwarding addresses are available, they will be forwarded on.”

However, replies from detainees were still not being received. This was considered unusual, as in the past asylum seekers had been responsive to messages of support.

What followed was months of email correspondence between Burnside and the department. It emerged that the Nauruan postal authorities would only accept the self-addressed envelopes if the Australian stamps had been purchased in Nauru.

Burnside continued to press for information about what had happened to the letters. On 11 August he wrote:

“I am disappointed not to have received a reply. You probably do not need to be reminded that it is a serious offence to interfere with mail. People held on Nauru have written letters in response to letters from members of the Australian public. Those replies are not being sent out. You are aware of the blockage. I have offered to put them in the Australian postal system if the reply letters are returned to me in bulk: they all have Australian postage stamps on them.”

There was no response. Two days later, he inquired again of Kierven: “Where are the letters?”

The correspondence was later referred to Tanya Findlay, director of the department’s Nauru operations coordination section, but by September, a month later, Burnside had not heard from her and replies from detainees had still not been received back in Australia.

By November last year the matter had moved to the department’s acting assistant secretary, Kylie Scholten, who emailed Burnside advising him that if he wanted to follow this up with the relevant postal services, “I recommend you search online.”

She added: “In future if you have any feedback about offshore processing, please contact the department’s global feedback unit” and provided a web address.

She said the service providers had arranged for all unclaimed correspondence to be returned to his office in Melbourne.

On 22 December Burnside received three large boxes from the department. They contained all but nine of the letters posted to asylum seekers. The letters were unopened and marked “Return to sender”.

Burnside wants to know why he was told by the department in June that the letters “are arriving and are being distributed” when this was not the case.

He has now also started receiving letters which had been sent to Manus marked “Return to sender”.

Transfield Services has responsibility for the mail deliveries to and from the regional processing centres and is investigating what happened to the letters.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection, which has overall responsibility for the conduct of the processing centres, did not respond to an inquiry from Guardian Australia.