The Nauru government has launched a bizarre broadside at Australian and New Zealand media, accusing the Guardian, the ABC, Fairfax and Radio New Zealand of “spreading lies” and failing “dismally” in an attempt to destabilise it.

In a swingeing attack on foreign media, who are – save for selected sympathetic reporters – banned from visiting the island, the justice minister, David Adeang, said media organisations had “unethically attempted to influence our domestic politics by spreading lies, promoting opposition MPs and refusing to report the huge progress Nauru has made over the past three years under the Waqa government”.

He said he was “sick of the lies and the lack of respect of our sovereignty” and confused as to why media outlets did not report on “other countries with poor human rights records and no democracy”.

The Guardian applied for a visa to visit Nauru to cover the elections in the weeks leading up to the poll but inquiries to Nauru’s director of immigration received no reply. It did report the results of the election, noting that the president, Baron Waqa, and Adeang, had been returned.

The elections were largely “safe, free and fair”, according to observers from the Pacific Islands Forum. “The people of Nauru have exercised their democratic and fundamental right to elect their members of parliament,” said an election monitor, Boki Raga.

But the polls were not without controversy. The former Nauruan opposition MP Roland Kun was trapped on the island for more than a year when the country refused to allow him to leave, alleging that he was a national security threat and that he had been involved in anti-government protests.

Kun, having applied for asylum on humanitarian grounds, was clandestinely granted New Zealand citizenship – and a passport was smuggled to him – so he could be reunited with his wife and three children in Wellington.

The Nauruan government is routinely criticised by human rights groups for its failure to protect free speech and the rule of law, as well as for breaching international legal obligations.



At the UN’s universal periodic review, the Australian government criticised the erosion of the rule of law in Nauru, urging the Pacific country to allow journalists to visit, lift censorship of the internet and stop banning MPs from parliament if they criticise the government.

Nauru’s adherence to the rule of law has also been heavily criticised by senior members of its judiciary. The country’s former chief justice, Geoffrey Eames, resigned from the role citing interference in judicial independence and the country’s only magistrate, Peter Law, was sacked and deported because the government did not approve of one of his migration decisions.

Nauru’s police and its criminal justice system are under-resourced. A Senate inquiry last year reported that Nauru police had laid charges in just five cases out of 50 referred to them. Despite formal reports of 29 sexual assaults on asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru, including 10 on children, there have been no arrests or prosecutions.

But the country has made changes to its criminal code. Same-sex relationships have been decriminalised and, after a refugee was convicted and fined for attempting suicide, this has also been removed from the criminal code.

Last year New Zealand suspended all aid to Nauru’s justice sector after repeatedly flagging concerns about justice and human rights on the island.



Since the collapse of its once-lucrative phosphate mining industry, the Nauruan government has been overwhelmingly dependent on Australian and New Zealand aid for its solvency. Nauru’s phosphate reserves were almost exhausted by the end of the 1990s, with an estimated 80% of the country being stripmined.