For months in the Australian-run detention centre she pleaded for her sons. The eldest, Fariborz Karami, killed himself last week

Two days before her son took his own life on Nauru, Fazileh Mansour Beigi’s final plea for help carried with it a warning too.

For months inside the Australian-run regional processing centre, Mansour Beigi had begged for help for her sons, whom she had watched deteriorate over five years in immigration detention. To anyone she could, she wrote letter after letter, pleading for someone to intervene.

On 13 June, two days before her eldest son, Fariborz, killed himself inside his tent, she wrote a final letter to Canstruct International, the Brisbane company that runs the processing centre under contract from the Australian government:

“Due to repetitive darkness of this life, my kids are depressed,” Mansour Beigi wrote in Persian. “I also am emotionally and physically in a fatal stage of my life. Many times, I have asked for your help, but, instead of assisting me, each time you have wounded me more.”

“Again, you have not answered me. You have not taken my request seriously. If my kids and myself get worse, you will be responsible.”

26-year-old Fariborz Karami was a Kurdish Iranian asylum seeker who had been held on Nauru for five years. While his claim for protection had been initially rejected, he had recently married, and he appeared to be making plans for a future, however unlit that future was.

He had a history of torture and trauma in Iran – having reportedly been kidnapped and threatened with execution as a 10-year-old child – and he slept poorly, plagued by nightmares. He battled depression for years, exacerbated, doctors wrote in medical reports, by his continued detention and the uncertainty over his future.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 26-year-old Fariborz Karami on Nauru before he took his own life.

But when he was well he was a popular member of the refugee and asylum seeker community, playing soccer on the small pitch built inside the camp. One picture his family has shows him posing with a trophy won in a match played between Nauruans and Iranians.

Friends remember him as gregarious and caring, but a man burdened by the dead weight of a gnawing sense of responsibility for his mother and his brother. In recent months he had begun to disengage, and those around him recognised his decline.

Iranian asylum seeker begged for help: 'I am suffering intensely' Read more

His 12-year-old brother, Ali, publicly pleaded for help for his older brother and his mother, who had been promised a medical transfer to Taiwan before it was cancelled at the last minute.

“I feel helpless because there is no one to help us,” the boy said in a video, published in the Guardian. “There is no one to see how we are suffering. My mother is very sick and my brother is totally depressed.”

On 24 April, a health summary completed by healthcare provider IHMS said Karami had missed several mental health screenings, and refused to participate in assessments, but that “no concerns ... had otherwise been identified”.

“Mr Karami states though his post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms continue, that he did not wish to engage with specialist health services,” the summary said.

“He spoke of being angry at times in the context of his long term detention but presented as calm during the consultation. He did voice his concerns for his mother’s behavioural changes, his younger brother’s current schooling achievements and their current living facilities.”

Asylum seeker boy on Nauru pleads for medical help for his mother Read more

On Friday morning, Karami was found unconscious by family members in his tent inside the RPC3 – the family camp – of the Australian-run regional processing centre.

He could not be revived.

He is the 12th person to die within Australia’s offshore immigration detention regime since “offshore processing” was restarted in 2012. Others have been murdered, died of medical neglect, drowned or been killed in road accidents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The memorial held for Fariborz Karami on Nauru following his suicide on Friday.

For the final months of his life, Karami’s mother kept up a stream of increasingly anguished correspondence to the camp’s management. She wrote to Canstruct International twice in April this year.

“Again and again, I am asking you help me. I request you to help myself and my kids. So far, with all misery, in any way we could, we tolerated our situation and trusted you. We were sure that you will shelter us. But it has became opposite. Bit by bit we die down. Physically and mentally we are deteriorated. Many time I begged you help. But each time you gave me repetitive answers.

“I can’t return to my country and IHMS doctors are not able to do anything for my kids. After five years, my kids’ situation and their environment need to be changed. They need to have a normal life. Please don’t make my children more sick. In anguish, I beg you to help.”

Mansour Beigi wrote a series of letters between August 2017 and March 2018, pleading for intervention.

“Each time you repeat that if I can’t put up with this circumstance, I should return to my country. If I could return to my country, why would I put up with your torturous prison and make myself and my children more and more sick each day. Please don’t give me the same answer. I am requesting help from you.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fariborz Karami and his younger brother Ali* celebrating Ali’s* 12th birthday.

In the wake of Karami’s death, there are serious concerns for the mental health of Fariborz Karami’s younger brother.

There has been a series of children attempting suicide on Nauru in recent months.

Three children, as young as 10, have been ordered off the island by Australian courts, who found that the processing centre was an unsafe environment for them and that there was not sufficient medical care for them on Nauru.

Karami’s body remains on Nauru, and his mother, brother and wife remain inside the regional processing centre. Family members and close friends have been allowed to see his body. But Karami’s family have been kept isolated, and have had little contact with other members of the refugee and asylum seeker community.

A memorial was held for Karami on the island.

Questions to Canstruct International and to IHMS were directed to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, which has ultimate authority over the camps. In response to detailed questions from the Guardian, a department spokesman said: “the department does not comment on individual cases”.



The government of Nauru expressed its condolences: “We can confirm that a man has died in the Nauru Regional Processing Centre today. Our thoughts and heartfelt prayers are with his family. Police are investigating.”

A World Refugee Day event planned for Wednesday on Nauru has been cancelled, sources on the island told the Guardian.

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org



