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‘The madness is eating us alive’: inside Australia’s asylum camp on Nauru
After two years in what Amnesty International calls an ‘open air prison’, Iraqi artist Abbas Alaboudi is losing hope
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Abbas Alaboudi has stopped painting as the pain of spending more than two years on Nauru has broken his spirit. He is one of the 755 refugees held indefinitely on the island that has become Australia’s offshore dumping ground in its deterrence of asylum seekers.
“There’s no life or future here,” Alaboudi told This Week in Asia from his room outside the detention centre where 442 of his fellow refugees are housed. “We are merely breathing so we don’t die on the sea.”
Amnesty claim refugees tortured and ‘driven to suicide’ at Nauru camp disputed by Australia
Amnesty International in a scathing report this week described Nauru as an “open air prison” driving refugees to psychological and physical harm with incidents of mutilation, suicide attempts and self-immolation arising from overwhelming despair.
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Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the report as “absolutely false”, instead blaming refugee advocates for the asylum seekers’ worsening conditions.
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For Alaboudi, a visual artist and plasterer by trade, the political wrangling has become too much and he has retreated to a more solitary existence, preferring to spend time by himself for fear of violence from the local population on the island.
Australia criticised over ‘severe abuse, inhumane treatment’ of asylum seekers in Nauru
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