Nauru files reveal spike in reported incidents three days after Australia announced its doomed plan to settle refugees in Cambodia

The misery and despair set out in the Nauru files, published by the Guardian, provides an unprecedented view of life in the Australian-run detention centre. We can identify the trends in incident reports over time and how they have rapidly risen on occasion. We can see how types of incidents – sexual assaults, self-harming, abuse – have changed over time.



But what was the worst day on Nauru? One day – 29 September 2014 – must be a candidate. Certainly it was among the most incident-packed. This was just three days before the then immigration minister, Scott Morrison, announced a sweeping review into conditions and allegations of assault at the detention centre. Several of the reports show the desperation of many of the asylum seekers, with several threatening self-harm.



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The incident logs, show an average of 2.3 reports a day. But on this extraordinary day there were 19 reports in total, many serious, listed below:



7am A family of asylum seekers reported they couldn’t access microwaves to cook baby food.



10am An asylum seeker told a child protection worker that he and his family had not been coping well. He said he hadn’t been eating much the past three weeks except biscuits and milk, and had decided to stop even this. “Anything is possible in this place,” he said when asked whether he was considering harming himself.



11.25am An asylum seeker child at the school expressed her unease about the Nauruan security guards. She told a teacher: “Nauruan guards should always have an Australian with them as they don’t know what to do.”



12.30pm An asylum seeker told a caseworker he had been pushed by a guard, causing his sunglasses to fall off his head.



12.30pm A woman said she feared her case would never be resolved. She said she would poison herself and her children – but she would leave her husband “to live his life”.



1pm A child asylum seeker told a caseworker her mother was not “emotionally well”. She said if things continued along the lines of the immigration department’s recent messaging she would consider self-harming.



2.13pm A student skipped school because a group of asylum seekers had said school was cancelled and the buses would not be coming for their usual pick-up.



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2.30pm A teacher filed a report about one of her pupils. The student told the teacher that if she received a negative refugee status decision she would be the first to self-harm. She made a gesture of cutting across her throat.



2.30pm An asylum seeker was seen with blood streaming down his face, shouting near the volleyball area. A large number of unaccompanied children aged between four and seven witnessed this.



2.39pm An asylum seeker with blood streaming down his face was seen being escorted away by a large number of guards. He was still shouting and appeared to the caseworker to be distressed. The caseworker was critical of the presence of the large number of security staff who took no action to move the children away. She wrote that the children had witnessed the asylum seeker “bashing his head with rocks”.



3pm A caseworker found a child crying in her room. She asked what was wrong. The girl said she left Iran for safety but instead “found herself locked in a rubbish bin for so long she wants to die”. She said she spent every day thinking of ways to kill herself.



4pm An asylum seeker said that he would keep his lips sewn together and would die in five days. He said Wilson Security guards had laughed at him and other protesters when they saw them.



4.05pm An asylum seeker said he had been told that Wilson Security’s “big boss” had told security guards to hurt and kill people when the cameras are turned off.



4.10pm A woman said she hadn’t eaten for three days as part of a protest against the Australian government’s announcement about resettlement in Cambodia. She said more asylum seekers would soon stop eating.



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4.30pm An asylum seeker saying goodbye to a caseworker called out, “I’m going to kill myself,” and laughed and laughed in what the caseworker wrote was a “jovial manner”. The caseworker said no further information had been obtained “due to physical distance and other priorities”.



5.15pm A caseworker reported that guards had been increasingly asking asylum seekers for sexual favours. One woman described requesting for a two-minute longer shower to wash her son’s hair; she said a guard would only allow her to do so if she showed him her body. She said both expatriate and Nauruan guards had been asking for sexual favours in exchange for cigarettes. Asylum seekers were afraid to report this.



6.15pm An asylum seeker said he was threatened by another asylum seeker when he got off the school bus. The boy said he had been threatened before on several occasions by other asylum seekers who told him not to attend school, engage in recreational activities or speak to Save the Children staff. He said he had been threatened for not attending protests.



9.20pm A group of young asylum seekers were planning a protest the following day. There were concerns they might harm themselves.



9.50pm An asylum seeker told a caseworker he was on a hunger strike and had not eaten for four days.

