Current and former employees of Save the Children, IHMS and Broadspectrum sign letter calling for detainees to be brought to Australia

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

More than 100 former employees from the Nauru and Manus detention centres have put their names to a letter calling for detainees to be brought to Australia after the publication of the Nauru files.

The letter says a proposed parliamentary inquiry does not go far enough and that many of them have already given evidence to past inquiries and investigations.

'This is critical': 103 Nauru and Manus staff speak out – their letter in full Read more

“This has reached crisis level and requires an immediate response,” said Toby O’Brien, a former child protection officer for Save the Children. “The evidence is already overwhelmingly clear.”

The letter follows one by 26 former Save the Children Workers, who publicly spoke out against offshore detention last week after the Guardian published the Nauru files. Many could face prosecution under the as-yet-unused Border Force Act which criminalised the disclosure of information about the centre by employees.

In addition, more than 1,800 academics from universities across Australia have signed an open letter to the prime minister and to all MPs calling for an end to offshore processing, boat turnbacks and mandatory detention.

The letter also argues Australia must work with other states in the Asia-Pacific region to create a regional refugee resettlement framework based on equity, capacity and responsibility, and contribute towards making the international system more sustainable.

The academics, from universities across Australia, have called for a national policy summit bringing together asylum seekers, refugees and former refugees, migrant and refugee advocates, policy experts, community representatives and politicians from all parties to create “a more just and humane approach to refugees”.

The Nauru files revealed the contents of more than 2,100 incident reports from a time period of just over two years on Nauru. More than half the incidents involved children, and many related to actual and alleged abuse.



Among the revelations was evidence that Wilson’s Security failed to disclose information to a Senate inquiry, and that the immigration department ignored unanimous advice from service providers to reunite a rape victim with her family.

“We’ve given evidence and it’s been ignored,’’ said Natasha Reid, a former case manager with the Salvation Army and Broadspectrum on Nauru.

“No change has occurred for the men we worked with since the last Senate inquiry. The camp is not safer, conditions have not improved, the physical and mental decline of those held continues.”

Nauru files show Wilson Security staff regularly downgraded reports of abuse Read more

Last week the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, dismissed the reports as being hyped and about incidents already known, and he alleged many were false. Dutton also accused asylum seekers of self-immolation purely to get to Australia.

Chris Lougheed, deputy education manager with Save the Children, rejected Dutton’s statements. “These reports are accurate observations written by experienced professionals,” he said.

“People are in immediate danger. Too much time has already passed. The Australian government must take responsibility and bring them here immediately.”

Shivani Keecha said there were several investigations and inquiries held while she worked on the island as coordinator of Save the Children’s child protection team in 2015.

“Nothing changed. It was already too little too late. We don’t need more evidence. We know these centres cause unacceptable harm. We need to bring these people to Australia and start the process of rebuilding their lives.’’

A psychologist who worked in the centre but is not known to be a signatory to the letter told Guardian Australia the reality was far worse than the files revealed, and he was personally aware of a number of severe cases and incidents which had not appeared.

He said any written request for an asylum seeker to speak with a counsellor or psychologist would see them sent to him. “One of the things I experienced while there, and why I was so traumatised, was I would say 98% of the people I dealt with were suicidal,” he told Guardian Australia.

“I saw perhaps six or seven people a day. If I saw seven people six of them were suicidal.” He said in his usual practice on the mainland he would ordinarily see two to three a year.

The psychologist said one incident between two detainee families, which saw one moved to Australia, sparked some conversations among detainees about getting transferred. “There was this general conversation around that’s how you get to Australia, you accuse someone of a crime and you get shifted to the mainland.”

But he said because of this talk there grew a “culture of disbelief” and immediate suspicion, which he said was “horrific given the number of times people actually were being assaulted or abused”.

Fact check: immigration minister Peter Dutton's claims against Nauru files Read more

“Virtually every person I was seeing wanted to end their life,” he said. “Adults, children, teenagers. This constant story of: I want to die, I don’t want to be here, I want to end my life.

“From an ethical point of view my job is to advocate for people and empower them, to end their suffering, but what needed to happen to end their suffering was out of my control.”

Prof Louise Newman from the University of Melbourne said Australia needed to comprehensively reform its laws around and attitudes towards those seeking asylum in this country.



“There is an urgent need for a national conversation to endorse a new way for treating people seeking asylum in Australia. We need comprehensive law reform.”

The group behind the academics’ letter, Academics for Refugees, has also published a policy paper on alternative policies.

Australia’s unique policy of mandatory detention of all asylum seekers who arrive by boat (it does not apply to those who arrive by plane) has been government policy since 1992. It presently has bipartisan support.

On Tuesday the Nauruan government, which did not respond to any requests during the Nauru files reporting and publication, said the refugee claims were “fabricated” and being used to suit a political agenda.

• Contact the Nauru files reporters securely and confidentially