Nauru Regional Processing Centre

2001: Establishment The establishment of an offshore processing centre on Nauru was based on a Statement of Principles, signed on 10 September 2001 by the President of Nauru, René Harris, and Australia's Minister for Defence at the time, Peter Reith. The statement opened the way to establish a detention centre for up to 800 people and was accompanied by a pledge of , equivalent to in , for development activities. The initial detainees were to be people rescued by , with the understanding that they would leave Nauru by May 2002. Subsequently, a memorandum of understanding was signed on 11 December, boosting accommodation to 1,200 and the promised development activity by an additional . Initial plans were for asylum seekers to be housed in modern, air-conditioned housing which had been built for the games of the International Weightlifting Federation. This plan was changed after landowners' requests for extra compensation were rejected. The first camp, called Topside, was at an old sports ground and oval in the Meneng District (). The second camp, called State House, was on the site of the old Presidential quarters also in the Meneng District ().--> A month-long hunger strike began on 10 December 2003. It included mostly Hazara from Afghanistan rescued during the Tampa affair, who were protesting for a review of their cases. By July 2005, 32 people were detained in Nauru as asylum seekers: 16 Iraqis, 11 Afghans, 2 Iranians, 2 Bangladeshis, and 1 Pakistani. All but two Iraqis were released to Australia, the last group of 25 leaving on 1 November 2005. The remaining two Iraqis stayed in custody for over a year. The last one was finally accepted by an undisclosed Scandinavian country after five years in detention, in January 2007. The other was in an Australian hospital at the time, and was later given permission to remain in Australia while his asylum case was being decided. In September 2006, a group of eight Burmese Rohingya men were transferred there from Christmas Island. On 15 March 2007 the Australian Government announced that 83 Tamils from Sri Lanka would be transferred from Christmas Island to the Nauru detention centre. They arrived in Nauru by the end of the month. 2007: Closing In December 2007, newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that his country would no longer make use of the Nauru detention centre, and would put an immediate end to the Pacific Solution. The last remaining Burmese and Sri Lankan detainees were granted residency rights in Australia. Nauru reacted with concern at the prospect of potentially losing much-needed aid from Australia. 2012: Reopening In August 2012, the Labor government led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the resumption of the transfer of asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia to Nauru (and Manus Island, PNG). Australia signed an initial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nauru on 29 August 2012. The first group arrived the following month. In November 2012, an Amnesty International team visited the camp and described it as "a human rights catastrophe [...] a toxic mix of uncertainty, unlawful detention and inhumane conditions". The MOU between Nauru and Australia was renegotiated on 3 August 2013. Clause 12 of the 2013 MOU allows for resettlement of refugees in Nauru: July 2013: Riot On 19 July 2013 a riot occurred at the detention centre and caused damage valued at , equivalent to in . Police and guards had rocks and sticks thrown at them. Four people were hospitalised with minor injuries. Other people were treated for bruising and cuts. The riot began at 3pm when the detainees staged a protest. Up to 200 detainees escaped and about 60 Several vehicles and buildings including accommodation blocks for up to 600 people, offices, dining room, and the health centre were destroyed by fire, equating to about 80 percent of the centre's buildings. 129 of 545 male detainees were identified as being involved in the rioting and were detained in the police watch house. November 2016: United States resettlement deal In November 2016 it was announced that a deal had been made with the United States to resettle people in detention on Nauru and Manus Islands. There is very little public information available about how many of these refugees will be resettled by the United States; initial reports however estimated up to 1,250 refugees would be resettled from Nauru and Manus Island. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull indicated that the priority is "very much on the most vulnerable", particularly families on Nauru. On 27 February 2017, the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection told a Senate Estimates Committee that preliminary screening had started as part of the resettlement deal, but officials from the United States Department of Homeland Security had not yet been authorised to start formally vetting applicants. August–September 2019: update on numbers The Australian Government reported that as of 28 August 2019 there were 288 people left on Nauru; 330 had been resettled in the US; and another 85 people had been approved for resettlement in the US, but had not yet left. It was reported that as of 30 September, the total number of asylum seekers left in PNG and Nauru was 562 (23 percent of the peak, in June 2014), and another 1,117 people had been "temporarily transferred to Australia for medical treatment or as accompanying family members". Numbers for each facility were not given separately. March–May 2020 In March 2020, Home Affairs told the Senate estimates committee that "211 refugees and asylum seekers remained on Nauru, 228 in Papua New Guinea, and about 1,220, including their dependents, were in Australia to receive medical treatment". Transfer and resettlement of approved refugees in the US was proceeding during the COVID-19 pandemic. June 2020: Brisbane , over 100 men from Manus and Nauru were being detained in an hotel in Kangaroo Point in Brisbane, after being transferred to the mainland for medical treatment. They were confined to quarters under a lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. The men held protests from their balconies, and protesters gathered outside on several occasions. The 25 men were released into the community in February 2021. September 2021: New agreement In September 2021, the Minister for Home Affairs signed a new deal with Nauru to keep an ongoing form of asylum seeker processing centre on the island. On 6 October 2021, the Australian Government passed responsibility for the remaining 124 men on PNG to the PNG Government. The remaining men were told that their options were either to transfer to Nauru or resettle in PNG. The official number of asylum seekers on Nauru was 107 on 31 July 2021. The operators of the facility, Canstruct, made a profit of at least per detainee in the financial year ending mid-2021. there were 115 held by Australia on Nauru, costing the government more than per year per asylum seeker (equating to nearly per day). On 8 November 2023, the High Court of Australia ruled that it was unlawful for people to be indefinitely detained in immigration detention in NZYQ v Minister for Immigration, twenty years after it had ruled it constitutionally valid in Al-Kateb v Godwin. ==Operators==

Between 2012 and October 2017, Broadspectrum (formerly known as Transfield Services; now Ventia) subcontracted Wilson Security to perform the operations at Manus and Nauru. In September 2016 Wilson announced that it would be withdrawing at the end of its contract in October 2017, citing damage to its reputation, and Ferrovial, major owner of Broadspectrum, also announced that it would cease providing services to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection at the same date. In January 2017, the Australian National Audit Office published an audit of the government's contract management of security and support services at the offshore processing centres. The report found "the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's management of the garrison support and welfare services contracts at the offshore processing centres... has fallen well short of effective contract management practice." It went on to highlight several weaknesses and gave three recommendations. In October 2017, the Brisbane firm Canstruct International The company made more than profit it its first financial year (ending 30 June 2018). It was intended that control should be handed over to a Nauruan Government commercial entity, the Nauru Regional Processing Centre Corporation on 31 October, but At the time of the handover to Canstruct, the company had assets of . In the financial year ending mid-2021, Canstruct made a profit of , which works out to over for each detainee (then numbering fewer than 200). ==Conditions and human rights issues==

On 19 July 2013, there was a major riot in the detention centre. Several buildings were destroyed by fire, and damage was estimated at , equivalent to in . Hunger strikes and self-harm, including detainees sewing their lips together, have been reported at the facility, as well as at least two people setting themselves on fire. Other attempted suicides were also reported. In 2013, a veteran nurse described the detention centre as "like a concentration camp". In 2015, several staff members from the detention centre wrote an open letter claiming that multiple instances of sexual abuse against women and children had occurred. The letter claimed that the Australian Government had been aware of these claimed abuses for over 18 months. This letter added weight to the Moss review which found it possible that "guards had traded marijuana for sexual favours with asylum seeker children". In 2018, reports of children engaging in self-harm and attempting suicide drew attention back to the conditions at the centre. Children as young as eight were documented as exhibiting suicidal behaviours, and an estimated 30 children were described as suffering from resignation syndrome, a supposedly progressive, deteriorating psychiatric condition. Extreme trauma experienced both in their country of origin and in their daily lives at the camp, coupled with a sense of hopelessness and abandonment, contributed to the onset of this condition. Media access Media access to the island of Nauru, and the Regional Processing Centre in particular, is tightly controlled by the Nauruan government. In January 2014, the Nauru government announced it was raising the cost of a media visa to the island from to , non-refundable if the visa was not granted. Since then journalists from Al Jazeera, the ABC, SBS and The Guardian have stated that they have applied for media visas with no success. The last journalist to visit the island before the commencement of Operation Sovereign Borders was Nick Bryant of the BBC. In 2014 the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No. 1) made it a crime, punishable with up to a 10-year prison sentence, to disclose any special intelligence operation, including relating to asylum seekers. This provided little protection to journalists seeking to report on information from whistle-blowers. It caused professional journalists as well as teachers and health professionals employed in these detention centres, to be silenced. Journalists were prevented from entering or reporting and staff members were gagged under draconian employment contracts that prevented them from speaking about anything happening in Australia's offshore detention centre, under threat of a prison sentence. The Secrecy and Disclosure Provisions of the 1 July 2015 Australian Border Force Act ruled that workers who spoke of any incidents from within one of the centres would receive a two-year prison sentence. This was later watered down in amendments put forward by Peter Dutton in August 2017, after doctors and other health professionals had mounted a high court challenge. The amendments would apply retrospectively and stipulated that the secrecy provision would only apply to information that could compromise Australia's security, defence or international relations, interfere with criminal investigations offences, or affect sensitive personal or commercial matters. In October 2015, Chris Kenny, a political commentator for The Australian, became the first Australian journalist to visit Nauru in over 18 months. While on the island, Kenny interviewed a Somali refugee known as "Abyan", who alleged she had been raped on Nauru and requested an abortion of the resulting pregnancy. Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre accused Kenny of forcing his way into Abyan's quarters to speak to her—a claim Kenny strongly denied. In June 2016, a television crew from A Current Affair was granted access to the island and the centre. Reporter Caroline Marcus presented asylum seekers housed in fully equipped demountable units, and provided with their own television, microwave, airconditioning units and refrigerator. In a column in The Daily Telegraph and an interview with ACA host Tracy Grimshaw, Marcus denied that there were any conditions on the crew's visit, and stated that the Australian government had been unaware of the crew being granted visas until after they had arrived on the island. == See also ==