Mohammed, a refugee from Iran, was sent to Nauru at the age of 15 and was not released until recently, aged 25. He described offshore detention as a chaotic, “barbaric system” that strips people of their humanity.
Arguably, the use of detention for immigration ‘offences’ is always morally wrong. But offshore detention gives licence to special forms of abuse, existing as it does in a ‘state of exception’ beyond proper legal checks and scrutiny.
Those I spoke to describe the system as a violent Kafkaesque nightmare; deprived of information about their case, cut off from regular communication with the outside world, and many miles from potential support networks, they suffered in fear and isolation.
Many saw this as part of a deliberate strategy of ‘psychological warfare’, designed to break their spirits. For Aadav, a refugee fleeing violence in Sri Lanka, indefinite detention on Manus Island “felt like a cut to the neck without bleeding”. In the words of Kasun, another Sri Lankan, the very construction of detention camps was made “to suffocate people”. Detainees were demonised as criminals and terrorists and referred to as numbers by staff, rather than by their real names.
Food and hygiene in the camps were poor, and medical support close to non-existent. Several detainees have died of medical negligence. Those who were permitted to go to the hospital for much-needed treatment could expect to be shackled in handcuffs and escorted by guards. In his celebrated account of life on Manus Island, Kurdish-Iranian author Behrouz Boochani describes detention as a ‘Kyriarchy’; a system of oppressive power that degrades refugees to the point where they lose touch with their own humanity and that of others.
It is no surprise that all those I spoke with reported high rates of anxiety, depression and PTSD in offshore detention. There were frequent cases of self-harm and suicide, of which I heard horrific stories. Indeed, one academic study found that rates of self-harm among those in offshore detention in Nauru were up to 216 times higher than that of the general population in Australia.
There were also mass hunger strikes, with several hundred people taking part in one such protest on Manus Island in 2015. The action, which was led by Yusef and others, was part resistance, part cry of despair. Yusef told me he did not starve himself “to get any answer. I went on hunger strike to just die. I was powerless, I was helpless and hopeless”.
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