All nerves and instant noodles
Dominion-Post (New Zealand) 03 January 2004 By KIM RUSCOE
EXCLUSIVE
On Nauru to investigate a hunger strike by asylum seekers, Dominion Post journalist Kim Ruscoe and photographer Andrew Gorrie were told to "get on the next plane out of here" by Nauruan President Rene Harris.
"Journalists are not allowed on the island," he growled at us during an audience at Parliament House on New Year's Eve.
"How did you get in here? I suggest you get yourselves on the next plane out of here."
We had intended gaining entry into Nauru by taking advantage of a loophole that allowed New Zealanders travelling via Fiji to enter the country without a visa.
We discovered after our arrival that new laws on December 8 require Kiwis to obtain a visitor's visa from the Australian Government, which almost always turned them down.
Despite the law change, we were not asked for visas by immigration officials at Fiji, where we boarded our Air Nauru flight, or on landing in Nauru.
We began to suspect we might not be able to get into the country when the flight attendant's eyes bulged on hearing our destination was Nauru.
Fearing that we could be put back on the plane at any time, we hid in our hotel room till it left Nauru for its final destination, Brisbane.
As soon as we heard the plane take off, we scuttled downstairs and went in search of a friendly local who would hire us a car for a couple of days. A Pakistani school teacher from the local college agreed to let us have his beat-up bomb for A$140 (NZ$160).
Of course, the petrol tank was empty but we persuaded our new-found friend to drive to a petrol station and queue for fuel, which we paid for.
He also sold us his phone card. We had been unable to find one in any of the stores and I needed to phone our contact in Australia for instructions on where a prearranged clandestine meeting with asylum seekers was to take place and to be given a code name, Arbi Laila - Afghanistan for mother of Laila.
Unfortunately, when we asked directions to our meeting place we were sent to the wrong spot and missed the asylum seekers.
After a frantic phone call to our Australian contact, we were told to go to the security gates at Topside Camp and make ourselves visible to the refugees.
Bearing gifts for the children and posing as visitors from Wellington who had been asked to check on the welfare of certain detainees, we asked the Australian guards if some could be brought to the gates to talk to us - a common but unofficial practice.
Confused by our presence, they sent us to see camp chief Cy Winter at a nearby hotel. He almost bought our story but, the more we talked, he became suspicious that we were lawyers, refugee supporters or media.
"How did you get in here?" he asked. "No one has got in here since a BBC reporter about a year ago."
Other media, including a German television crew, who had turned up had been herded straight back on to the plane.
We explained we were Kiwis, did not need a visa and that we were visiting friends for a couple of days. "But even two New Zealand dignitaries who wanted to come here and visit the refugees couldn't get in," he said.
If we were media, he warned, the Nauruan Government would ensure we did not leave the island with the information and photos we had come to gather. He sent us packing and told us if we wanted to visit the camp we would have to get permission from President Harris the next day.
However, Mr Harris had collapsed with a stroke during a meeting earlier in the day and had been taken to hospital.
The following morning we went in search of an acting president, whoever that might be. The minister concerned had not arrived at work by midday but we did see him early afternoon.
He told us Mr Harris "was fine" and would be arriving soon to attend a caucus meeting, then a parliamentary sitting, and we could see him then.
We felt positive that Mr Harris would allow us to tour the camp but were shocked when he refused to shake my hand, called us yahoos and told us in no uncertain terms that we were not welcome on the island.
Fearing arrest, we went to one of two local Internet cafes where I transcribed my shorthand notes and e-mailed them to myself.
While in the cafe, we contacted a detainee who had been escorted there by camp guards. He agreed to tell us his story and have his photos taken.
We slipped out of the cafe to a disused building. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, 18-year-old Ali Madad Razai's head and eyes constantly flicked around, nervous not that he would be caught but that he would be stopped from telling us his harrowing story.
We slipped a small digital camera to a detainee and arranged for it to be smuggled out late that night.
We raced back to the hotel room, transcribed the tapes into shorthand then went back to the cafe and typed up the notes, which I once again e-mailed to myself. That night, we burned all my notes, wiped the tape and hid the digital camera card in the lining of my suitcase.
Back at the hotel, we ate yet another pottle of instant noodles - not prepared to trust that the Chinese takeaways available did not contain dog or cat meat. With no cooking facilities, instant noodles, Pringles chips and a packet of wine biscuits were our only food.
We then waited nervously to keep a late night rendezvous. We pulled up at the deserted meeting place, switched off the lights and waited till we heard a whistle from the darkness.
Getting out of the car, I picked my way to where I thought the sound had come from but saw nothing. I waited till another whistle came and followed the sound till I saw a flashlight flick on and off. Crouched in the bushes was a group of detainees eager to tell their stories.
They bundled into the back of the car and we sped off to a little used area of beach.
As residents celebrated New Year, the detainees quietly told their stories as we sat on the sand.
They told of life in the camp, the fighting in Afghanistan that had killed many of their relatives, children being taught to use guns as a means of protection and their dreams for a free life.
THEY believe they are being exploited by the Nauruans - the island would be bankrupt without the money the Australian Government pays to house the detainees.
When it was time to go, a kind of sadness filled the air. The detainees shuffled their feet unwilling to leave the little bit of freedom that had come their way.
The following morning it was time for us to go to the airport and face the baggage search we had been warned of. Having checked in our bags, we stood nervously smoking under the terminal veranda.
Next to us stood an engineer from an Australian-owned Lear jet parked beside the runway.
The jet had been chartered by the president to deliver a Nauruan minister home after a visit to Australia the previous day, but the crew had been refused clearance to fly out and had been forced to overnight on the island.
Mr Harris, who had returned to hospital, had ordered the plane grounded till the following day.
The anticipated search and feared arrest never came, we passed through customs without incident and after a long, stressful wait in the departure lounge, we boarded the plane bound for Fiji. Clicking our seat belts into place, Andrew snapped off a photo of my smiling face as we anticipated our departure from what for us was a hell hole.
All the passengers were seated, the flight crew had gone through the emergency checks, we should have been on our way, but still we sat on the tarmac, engines running.
The next minute a woman with a handheld radio boarded the plane, approached our seats and demanded our tickets.
The smile dropped from my face, my stomach lurched, my heart beat louder than a heavy metal band.
She tore the ticket slips from the folder that should have been removed during check in, looked at us apologetically and said, "Thank you, sorry about that."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dominionpost/0,2106,2773358a6000,00.html
Island of no hope
Dominion-Post (New Zealand) 03 January 2004 By KIM RUSCOE in Nauru
EXCLUSIVE
Asylum seekers on a hunger strike in protest at their apparent life sentence on a near-bankrupt South Pacific island say they will be dead within a week.
The Dominion Post is the first news organisation in the world to visit Nauru since about 45 people began the hunger strike more than three weeks ago. One of the hunger strikers had heart problems, two had "rotten" sores on their legs and some had sewn their lips together, other detainees told The Dominion Post this week. Most were said to be suffering severe kidney pain and were so weak they had to be carried about the camp on stretchers.
Detainee Ali Madad Razai said the asylum seekers frequently dropped into unconsciousness and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance and given intravenous drugs. The local hospital was ill-equipped to meet the demand of the detainees and doctors had refused their requests for further medical treatment.
"They do not want to die, they want to live. A hunger strike is something you do when you have no other option. Believe me, we had no other option," he said. "If the world didn't know that we were alive before, they can at least know there are some tragic events on Nauru after the asylum seekers' deaths."
Media are banned from Nauru, as are supporters of the asylum seekers and their lawyers. Visitors must obtain prior approval for their visit from the Australian Government, which paid Nauru A$30 million (NZ$34 million) to house the asylum seekers, but runs the camps itself.
A Dominion Post reporter and photographer flew into Nauru from Fiji, ostensibly to visit friends, and spent two days talking with detainees, most of whom appeared in good physical condition.
Nauru itself appears on the edge of disintegration. There are long queues for petrol, when it is available, erratic water and electricity supply and little food to buy. Government workers, who have not been paid for months, queue at the only bank, which often runs out of money. Various options have been considered for Nauruans' future, including giving them all citizenship of Australia, which controlled the island till independence in 1968.
Ali, an 18-year-old from Afghanistan, was 16 when he arrived 18 months ago on the tiny equatorial island north of the Solomon Islands. This week he took on the responsibility of speaking out for all remaining 284 asylum seekers - including 93 children.
The detainees were dumped on Nauru up to 2-1/2 years ago after Australia took its hard line on asylum seekers trying to reach its shores. All those remaining had been refused refugee status after a single interview with immigration officials soon after their arrival.
Ali said the interpreter present during that interview was from an ethnic group that had been a long-time persecutor of the Hazara ethnic group, to which most of the remaining detainees belong. Since that one interview the detainees had been refused the right to a review of that decision and had been denied access to lawyers, media and refugee groups.
They had been told by Australia to return to Afghanistan which was safe now that the Taleban had been brought under control by the United States coalition forces.
But the detainees believed they would be killed if they returned.
Of the 100 asylum seekers who agreed to go back about six months ago, two had been confirmed killed, one by the Taleban, Ali claimed. The others had disappeared back into the refugee system. He said none had remained in Afghanistan.
Australia was pressuring the remaining detainees to go back voluntarily, and had even suggested they might be forced back, Ali said.
"If we go back there we will be killed. Too many of our relatives have been killed, all we want is a peaceful place to live, and freedom."
* Four asylum seekers on hunger strike have now threatened to sew their eyelids together, it was reported by AAP last night.
Hazara Ethnic Society of Australia president Hassan Ghulam said the three Afghans and a Pakistani had already sewed their lips together.
He had received an e-mail yesterday from one of the men, an Afghan. "The e-mail is saying from January 10, 2004, if their issue is not paid attention to, they will sew their eyes as well."