Continuing the spotlight on abuse and cruelty – Australia’s immigration prison on Nauru
Trigger warning: This document contains distressing content as we continue to shine a light on the heartbreaking impact of Australia’s cruel policies of detaining refugees – this time in offshore detention and Nauru Island
As the Big Walk 4 Refugees virtual walk progresses throughout June, we continue to draw attention to locations where people who hoped to find a safe home in Australia instead experienced extreme harm, pain and trauma because of Australia’s policies.
Australia’s immigration prison on Nauru witnessed some of the worst of these abuses.
The devastating horror and abuse occurring on Nauru has been extensively documented by numerous Australian and international organisations, including the Australian Human Rights Commission, Medecin Sans Frontiere, UN Human Rights Committee and Human Rights Watch.
Children shutting down, refusing to eat, unable to respond, listless, psychologically withdrawing – this is the heartbreaking reality of Australia’s offshore detention policies.
Violence, assaults, sexual abuse, self harm, suicide, despair, hopelessness, fear - an unnecessary and heartbreaking reality.
Politicians and bureaucrats dismissed these damning reports.
The Nauru Files were harder to sweep away – 8000 pages of gruelling reading based on 2000 leaked incident reports detailing shocking abuse and harm occurring in ‘routine dysfunction and cruelty’. Read the full Nauru Files published by the Guardian in October 2016.
Thousands of families, children, young people and unaccompanied minors were kept here for years.
Living in tents, without adequate supports, in unsafe conditions.
This led to shameful failures to protect children, shameful cover ups of abuse, shameful cover ups of a mental health crisis.
The cycle of harm continues. Up to 100 people have been moved to Nauru since October 2023. They have no certainty, no pathways for resettlement.
Despite maintaining the fiction that Australia has no responsibility for people it forcibly removes to Nauru under an infrastructure that Australia controls, the UN confirmed in January 2025 its resolute view that Australia remains responsible for those it forces offshore, stating: “a State party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another State.” Read the UN’s statement here.
It is well past time for Australia to end the cruelty of offshore ‘processing’.