Angelina Jolie Is Going To Visit Australia’s Detention Centre On Nauru
This is going to be embarrassing.
The ABC is reporting that Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and small-time actress Angelina Jolie has accepted a standing invitation to travel to Nauru from Nauruan President Baron Waqa, after meeting Waqa at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence Against Women in Conflict a month ago.
Waqa reportedly invited Jolie in order to showcase Nauru’s facilities for refugees, which it believes are “world’s best practice”; an assessment that kind of stands awkwardly next to the UNHCR’s description of Nauru’s refugee facilities back in January as hot, rat-infested and “do not provide safe and humane conditions of treatment in detention”.
Jolie, a mother of six, might be particularly keen to follow up on UNHCR’s finding that “no child, whether an unaccompanied child or within a family group, should be transferred from Australia to Nauru” after their visit in October last year.
When questioned by reporters, Minister for Immigration and human cesspit Scott Morrison denied Jolie’s visit would impact negatively on Australia’s international reputation and that “who visits Nauru is a matter for the Nauruan government”.
“Those are matters for the Nauruan government, they decide who comes to their country. You should direct those questions to them”, Morrison said before continuing to duck questions about the basic well-being of some of the world’s most desperate and poorly-treated people like the cowardly bastard he is.
Hopefully Jolie’s visit and subsequent highlighting of the hideous conditions Australia is forcing human beings to live in will force the government to change its immigration practices for the better. In the meantime, here’s a sitting senior Minister of government telling a bunch of people they’ll rot for years in captivity for no reason via a pre-recorded video message filmed thousands of kilometres away, because he’s as brave as a lion.
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Feature image via UNHCR.