‘This American Life’ Spotlights Australia’s Offshore Detention With A Confronting Story On Nauru
"Since we first aired this story back in 2003, the number of refugees held on Nauru has risen."
In 2003, This American Life released an episode called “The Middle of Nowhere” which discussed the torrid history of Nauru. Reporter Jack Hitt explored the island’s past use as a place in which powerful nations would hide illicit money flow, and more recently, as an offshore detention centre for refugees.
If you haven’t listened to the original episode you really should: it unpacks the genesis of then-Prime Minister John Howard’s “Pacific Solution” of offshore detention (which at the time received enormous support) and details the grim conditions in Nauru’s camps. “These people fleeing the Taliban, escaping Saddam Hussein, are technically our allies. Yet they live in conditions not much different than our sworn enemies housed at Guantanamo,” Hitt says.
Hitt also provides a rare description of the environment outside of the detention centre: a “haunting landscape of dugout stone channels” which are lined with “appallingly silky dirt, and old, filthy trash, too expensive to export from the island” (and this is where Malcolm Turnbull wanted refugees to resettle?). The most chilling part is perhaps the story of then-Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, visiting the detention centre (which Hitt refers to as a “concentration camp”).
“When Ruddock arrived, all the camps’ children and women were in their best clothes. They carried flowers, hundreds stood in formation to greet him. Ruddock entered, walked across the entire room to confer with the Nauruan officials, and didn’t once acknowledge the detainees,” he said. “He wouldn’t even look at [them].”
At about 31.55, Ira Glass delivers an update on the situation in Nauru, which as you can imagine, was not good. “Since we first aired this story back in 2003, the number of refugees held on Nauru has risen,” he says.
“In 2015, it was over 600 people according to the Australian government. Just in the last three weeks, two refugees on Nauru, a 23-year-old man and a teenage girl, set themselves on fire as a protest. They had to be air-lifted to Australia for treatment. The man didn’t survive. The girl did; she’s now in a stable condition and faces months of recovery, after which the Australian government might possibly send her back to Nauru.”
I love that This American Life says no one knows that Nauru exists.
— Amy CT (@amyct_) May 24, 2016
Just listening to This American Life. Nauru is being featured and Australia's shame is front and center. #notasolution
— Belinda Weaver (@copywritemattrs) May 25, 2016
Ok, so every Australian should listen to this week's episode of @ThisAmerLife. The first story on Nauru – past and present – is excellent.
— Nick Names Nuts (@nicknamesnuts) May 24, 2016
Even though the Papua New Guinean Prime Minister has announced the closure of the Manus detention centre, the timeline for this is still unclear. Yesterday, The New York Times published a scathing column describing Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull’s policy of offshore detention as “textbook rules for the administering of cruelty”. It will be interesting to see if this increased international scrutiny will sway the federal government’s position on the treatment of incoming refugee and asylum seekers.