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friendly_iconoclast

(15,333 posts)
Sat Aug 13, 2016, 03:00 AM Aug 2016

Life in Nauru detention: a dark, wretched Truman Show without the cameras

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/13/life-in-nauru-detention-a-dark-wretched-truman-show-without-the-cameras

There is horror in the Nauru files and then there is banality: countless records documenting squabbles between children, lost possessions, late buses and toilet blocks running out of soap. In the engineered society of an offshore immigration detention centre, there is drama, tedium and the unrelenting surveillance of Big Brother or The Truman Show – but without the cameras rolling.

The Nauru files catalogue an inordinate amount of suffering, abuse and anguish among the detained asylum seekers, but these are not the only stories. Because of the requirement that staff file reports on every classifiable incident, the thousands of entries document what everyday life is like in the dystopian world created by the Australian-backed companies running the camp.

How notable incidents were defined and graded was vague and changed over time. Strict reporting timeframes meant a worker sometimes had to choose between responding to a major incident and rushing to file a report within 30 minutes, to avoid a financial penalty to their organisation. As a result many incident reports designated “minor” make for horrifying reading

The files are littered with reports about children – in particular a core group of troubled kids under the age of 10 – fighting, throwing rocks and acting dangerously by leaning out of bus windows and running across the road. Much of it is mundane.




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Life in Nauru detention: a dark, wretched Truman Show without the cameras (Original Post) friendly_iconoclast Aug 2016 OP
"Welcome to Nauru" marble falls Aug 2016 #1

marble falls

(56,358 posts)
1. "Welcome to Nauru"
Sat Aug 13, 2016, 07:21 AM
Aug 2016

Welcome to Nauru

The people of the tiny, potato-shaped Republic of Nauru were once among the world's richest. Formerly known as Pleasant Island (and now abbreviated, more prosaically, as RON), Nauru supplied Australia with abundant fertiliser for almost a century after vast phosphate deposits were discovered in 1900. By 2005, in an abrupt reversal of fortune, Nauru was a nearly failed state with an uncertain future, dependent on... Read More - https://www.lonelyplanet.com/nauru

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/10/asia/australia-nauru-leaked-files/index.html

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Ma0cd0fad06af06a4eb1b456f1312bc85H0%26pid%3D15.1&f=1


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