YAREN – Nauru’s government says its controversial crackdown on free speech, including its move to ban Facebook in the country, is necessary to protect ethnic groups such as asylum seekers.

The Pacific state’s international reputation has taken a battering in recent months following the moves, which have been widely criticised as anti-democratic and in breach of international human rights laws.

In May, the government amended Nauru’s criminal code to prohibit threatening, abusive or insulting language that could stir up racial, religious or political hatred.

Breaches of the new law are punishable by up to seven years in jail.

Everyone, from opposition MPs to the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, has criticised the government’s crack down on free speech.

In a rare interview with a government official, Nauru’s Justice Secretary Lionel Aingimea said the aim of the crackdown is merely to protect people and “to stop criticism, intimidation and harassment”.

“Those kinds of sentiments are not to be tolerated,” he said.

The justice secretary said such intimidation towards the government had not actually occurred, but that due to an increased number of “ethnic groups” in Nauru, the government needed such motions to “protect everyone”.

The “ethnic groups” Aingimea refers to are the 400 refugees who have been released into the community from the Australian government’s asylum seeker detention centre.

Critics have stated the crackdown was sparked in an attempt to silence refugee protests of squalid living conditions.

Aingimea denies the new law stops people from criticising the government.

“We’re not stopping criticism. People are still criticising the government and we do nothing about it,” he said. “It’s about protecting everybody.”

Perhaps even more controversial than the new limits on free speech is the government’s ban on Facebook, which made headlines around the world and put Nauru in the company of other countries like North Korea and Iran who also block the social media website.

In May, when Nauru announced what it declared as a “temporary” ban on Facebook, the government claimed the decision was part of a wider crackdown on pornography, particularly child pornography.

When asked why Facebook was targeted when trying to tackle pornography, Aingimea said the ban was to specifically tackle Nauruan pornography, which he alleges Facebook users were sharing on the platform.

Aingimea added the government had met with representatives of Facebook, but said only that the meeting was “fruitful”.

Critics have called the government’s efforts dictatorial, an allegation which the justice secretary refuted.

“I can’t see how it is dictatorial. This is a democracy that has been elected through general elections that the majority of the people took part in,” he said.

However there remain many people, both inside and outside Nauru, who disagree.

A consequence of the recent crackdown has been the widely criticised arrest of several Nauruan opposition MPs.

Mathew Batsiua, an MP who was charged with “disturbing the parliament”, attacked what he called the government’s relentless campaign to crack down on dissent.

“We believe that under this government Nauruans live in fear,” he said, adding that he was knowingly putting himself at risk for speaking out.

“A lot of our rights, a lot of our freedom of speech have been affected from day one of this government, and that’s why we were suspended – because we spoke to the media and criticised the actions of this government.”

Two Nauruan opposition MPs, Squire Jeremiah and former president Sprent Dabwido, who have been in police custody since Friday were due to appear in court today in relation to the protests.

Batsiua who was arrested and bailed faces charges of disrupting the legislature and he says he expected Jeremiah and Dabwido to face similar charges.