SYDNEY – Several hundred people have joined a rally in Sydney in support of a Somali refugee who claims she was raped on Nauru and who is at the centre of a dispute with the Immigration Minister over her treatment.

The 23-year-old woman known as Abyan was flown to Australia for an abortion last week, but Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said she decided not to proceed with it and was sent back.

Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition said the woman told him that was not the case.

He told the rally, held outside the Department of Immigration offices in central Sydney, that she must be returned to Australia for urgent medical attention.

“She still wants to pursue the termination – she’s still considering that termination,” he said.

“She needs to know it’s going to happen somewhere where it’s going to happen safely.

“She is still on Nauru, she is still distressed, she still needs the medical attention that the Australian government has not been willing to provide.”

Rintoul described her treatment as “beyond disgraceful”, saying she had pleaded for medical attention since August but was ignored until there was such a public outcry and the government could no longer ignore it.

“Compare that with how quickly the Immigration Minister acted to remove Abyan from Australia,” he told the Sydney rally.

“He used a specially chartered RAAF jet to fly her out of Australia so he could get her out of the jurisdiction of a court, because they were not willing to have their treatment scrutinised by a court.”

Activist group Get Up national director Paul Oosting said a similar rally took place in Melbourne and 40,000 people from around Australia also signed a petition calling on the immigration minister to bring Abyan back to Australia for urgent medical care.

“She needs to be returned so she can receive the type of care that every other Australian would expect to receive,” he said.

“We’ve heard from Abyan directly that she did not receive the sort of care that this government claims they provided her with.”

Julie Macken, from a group calling itself Australian Women in Support of Women on Nauru, told the rally in Sydney that Nauru was a “black site” where there was no independent oversight and no access for the media.

“The situation for Abyan was that when she came to Australia that black site on Nauru spread to Australia,” Macken said.

“She had no access to a friendly face, there was no-one who could hold her hand, civil society was locked out of her life, her lawyer was not even allowed access to her on several occasions,” she said.

“It is untenable for the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to allow Nauru to remain the black site it is.”

She told the rally that Turnbull must “step up” and ask that Nauru “allow access to civil society”.

“Allow the United Nations the freedom to go there and report on conditions, and ensure the foreign media is allowed access to the site,” Macken said.

“Until that happens, we will never know what happened on that island. We will never know what these women are experiencing, we will never be able to support the people of Nauru who have been left with an island that is trashed physically and politically.”