SYDNEY: Australia is deliberately failing to combat the abuse of asylum-seekers on the Pacific island of Nauru to deter others from arriving by boat, two global human rights groups said on Wednesday.

The report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch is a scathing criticism of Canberra’s immigration policy under which asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia by boat are taken to Papua New Guinea or Nauru.

The government, which said on Wednesday it rejects the report’s allegations, has a policy of refusing asylum-seekers settlement in Australia and keeping them in the Pacific islands or returning them home, even if they are refugees.

In the latest criticism of the Canberra’s controversial stance, Amnesty and HRW said asylum-seekers and refugees on Nauru suffered “severe abuse, inhumane treatment, and neglect”.

The government’s “failure to address serious abuses appears to be a deliberate policy to deter further asylum-seekers from arriving in the country by boat”, it added.

Doctors, lawyers and refugee advocates have previously criticised the offshore settlement, with allegations that some asylum-seekers suffered sexual abuse and mental health problems while in the camp.

“Driving adult and even child refugees to the breaking point with sustained abuse appears to be one of Australia’s aims on Nauru,” said HRW’s Michael Bochenek, one of the two researchers who went to Nauru last month to interview 84 asylum-seekers and refugees.

Those interviewed, who came from nations including Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, told the rights groups they had developed severe anxiety, an inability to sleep, mood swings, prolonged depression and short-term memory loss, while describing conditions as “prison-like”.

“People here don’t have a real life. We are just surviving. We are dead souls in living bodies. We are just husks. We don’t have any hope or motivation,” one woman said.

Australia said Amnesty did not consult with the immigration department about the investigation, with a spokesman adding that the “department strongly refutes many of the allegations in the report”.

Conditions ‘abhorrent’

Asylum-seekers on Nauru have been free to roam around the tiny nation since last year, no longer forced to stay in the detention centre.

But the researchers said conditions outside the centre were “abhorrent”, with reports that asylum-seekers were beaten, robbed and harassed by some members of the local community.

Despite criticism of its immigration policy, Australia’s conservative government has strongly defended it, saying it has halted the spate of boat arrivals, and drownings, of earlier years.

But refugee advocates and journalists say a veil of secrecy has been drawn around the processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, with only a handful of them gaining access to the camp in recent years.

Some 442 asylum-seekers are being held in Nauru, and another 854 on Manus Island, according to immigration department data ending June 30.

But PNG has said that its camp on Manus will close after its Supreme Court found that detaining people at the centre was unconstitutional and illegal.

PNG’s Supreme Court has now ordered Canberra to present a resettlement plan for asylum-seekers held on Manus Island by Thursday, including options about where else they could go if they did not want to remain in the Pacific nation, said a lawyer for the detainees, Ben Lomai.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2016