Photo credit: the National
The Nauru Regional Processing Centre is an offshore Australian immigration detention facility in use from 2000 to 2008, 2012 to 2019, and September 2021.
The detainees at the centre have suffered severe human rights abuses, and there are widespread reports of suicides and psychiatric illnesses.
The Guardian reports that the number of asylum seekers there has been slowly growing. They fear they will spend years trapped on the island.
One said, “We don’t know how long we will be here, what will happen to us. Our situation is very difficult.”
Mohammed Bashir Anjum, a Pakistani asylum seeker who has been in Nauru for four months, is one of the few able to make contact outside the island. The immigration officials confiscated his phone.
He said, The depression is very bad, terrible. No one can tell us what our future is.
The offshore processing centre was closed last year after a decade of controversial operation. However, the detention centre was still in temporary use.
The centre started receiving asylum seekers from Australia in September. In June, it received 37 asylum seekers, and its current capacity is 100. About 85 inmates are held in RPC1 detention centres, while about 15 are in the Nauru community.
Asylum seekers say they fear spending years trapped on the island. The previous group spent up to a decade.
Anjum said many in his group had faced severe persecution in their home countries. They did not find a respite in Nauru. He also said medical care was inadequate.
