Check-in for the 12.30am Brisbane-Nauru flight closes an hour before departure. If you miss it, you'll wait a week for the next one.
Nauru is not visible from the air until you almost land, a potato-shaped speck, besieged by the Pacific Ocean. From the moment you step off the plane you're at the mercy of the elements: the sweltering heat or the unabashed downpours.
There's one main road that winds around the country's coast – a loop that takes less than half an hour to complete. I was given directions to my accommodation and made the mistake of asking if it was far. The lady looked at me and laughed, “This is Nauru,” she said. “Nothing's far.”
A large part of the terrain has been scarred by decades of mining for phosphate, a mineral that in the 1970s and 1980s made Nauru one of the richest countries in the world.
The primary deposits have since dried up, and the profits squandered, leaving the country with limited sources of income and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. The 10,000 people who live here rely on aid, small businesses and fishing ventures for income.
Perhaps that's why Nauruans have generally embraced the Australian detention centre that opened in what they refer to as 'the topside camp'. Since mid-September more than 100 Naurans have found work there. One hundred workers, I'm told, can support up to 500 people - one-twentieth of a country's population looked after in a matter of months.
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The only supermarket on the island has seen a spike in sales in the last two months and several entrepreneurial locals have begun leasing out cars, homes and services to the steady flow of Australian immigration officials, logistics staff, health workers and journalists.
The island's two hotels are now often booked out. One manager told me they're planning to expand, and possibly build a new hotel with what he called "a DIAC wing". He then promptly recoiled as if he'd revealed something he shouldn't have, then looked at me and said, "Okay, I'll shut up now.”
You can talk about business as much as you like but there's a general reluctance to talk about why there's so much activity on the island.
It's almost as if the detention centre is not really there. You can't see it from the main part of town and even though it's supposed to be an open centre, it's far from it. Detainees are allowed out on group excursions at certain times during the week but they're always chaperoned.
My visit deliberately coincided with Amnesty's inspection of the centre but it was made explicitly clear that no media would be allowed inside. The reasons varied – the right paperwork hadn't been drawn up yet, the correct procedures weren't in place, there was a concern a media visit would spark unrest among the detainees. We could film as much as we wanted out the front but how many shots can you get of a gate?
The detention centre is more visible from behind, but to see it we had to trek through an abandoned mine site. From the top of the hill you can see a perfect row of tents. For a moment it looks almost quaint. But then you remember that 400 men live here, sometimes up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the sweltering heat and pouring rain.
Amnesty International has described the conditions as "inhumane". The government says they're temporary but Nauru's Foreign Minister, Kieren Keke, says permanent structures can't be erected until a dispute among landowners is settled. How long that will take is not clear.
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There's also a delay in processing because Nauru has no legal system in place to process asylum claims. The legislative framework, currently before the parliament, had to be established from scratch. What is clear is that the country was not – and is not – ready to house and process asylum seekers.
Australia's immigration department is reluctant to call it a "detention centre" because the men are free to leave at any time. It prefers "processing centre" but so far no one has been processed. The men have access to food, water, medical aid, councilors, translators and recreational activities.
I put the question to an asylum seeker over the phone. "Do you have enough food?" I asked. He paused before saying, “We don't want food, we want freedom.” They now face the prospect of spending up to five years on the island with no guarantee of eventual resettlement in Australia.
I am about to write a concluding paragraph on the lingering questions some of the asylum seekers have. But as I begin typing an email pops up: it's from Nauru so I'll let them ask:
“If this is a law it should be same for all asylum seekers. We Iranian, Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis asylum seekers being shifted by force from Australia to Nauru. We don't want our process to be start here in Nauru according to Nauru law. We are asylum seekers of Australia. WE don't know Nauru." "We want to take us back to Australia and start our process some other asylum seeker who arrived after 13th august are still in Australia and soon they will be released on bridging visas in Australian communities." "Why only 400 asylum seekers to be processed offshore among 8,000 asylum seekers? Are we not same as other asylum seekers? We don't want to be processed in Nauru, we want to be treated the same as the rest of the asylum seeker are being treated." "We want to close the Nauru. We want justice. The conditions here is against humanity. We have a hard copy of the same letter with the signatures of all asylum seekers." Regards
Asylum seeker in Nauru Hell
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