NAURU – A forensic psychiatrist who studied refugees detained by Australia on Nauru says it’s her duty to speak out about the children engaging in self-harm and attempting suicide.

Dr Nina Zimmerman was contracted by the United Nations to visit Nauru in April and gauge the level of mental disorder amongst the thousand refugees marooned there.

Her mission was marred by the self-immolation of a refugee and the Nauru government’s claim that the UN’s presence had encouraged his suicide.

“Well, it certainly occurred in our presence, but I think it has to be seen in the context of ongoing self harm and suicide attempts.

“It had been escalating ever since the high court decision in Australia in Febuury when they found that offshore detention was in fact legal. There had been a lot of hope among the refugees and asylum seekers that the decision was going to go the other way and there was a lot of despair after that finding and an increase in self harm and suicide attempts.

“There had been self immolation attempts prior to us getting there, so this was not something completely out of the blue. But I’ve got no doubt that there were very clear protests aimed at getting our attention saying, ‘what are the UNHCR actually doing?’

“So there was certainly a feeling of anger towards us that we were not actually going to be able to achieve anything and they were certainly making the most, understandably, of our presence there to protest about the conditions that they’re being held in.

“But I think for a man to set himself alight indicates a degree of distress and despair that is beyond just making a protest. I think it points to a much deeper pathology than that.

Zimmerman said overwhelmingly, people that they spoke to had given up.

“There was, I suppose, a mixture of despair, anger, hopelessness. People had disengaged from the health centre in detention.

“We spoke with people in the processing centres, but also in the settlements, they were disengaging from the health services available because they just felt that there was no help available to them.

“The depression and the post traumatic stress disorder that was present there, was afflicting 81 percent of the people we spoke to. These people weren’t getting treatment partly because it wasn’t available but partly because what is available they were not engaging with.

“Interestingly, those figures are way higher than any comparable study that’s been done on refugees and asylum seekers.

“They are really astronomical figures and they’re across a community of men women and children, about a thousand on Nauru

Zimmerman said it was hard to compare Nauru to other situations where people are detained.

“Because these are people who have not committed any crime. But there are certain standards that prisons in Australia have to live up to. There are certain rights that prisoners have and the people living in Nauru simply don’t have any structures that they can go to to complain. I have never seen people living in poorly ventilated tents. These are not things that happen in prisons, but this is how children are living in camps in Nauru.”

Zimmerman said there was a real sense of injustice and desperation on Nauru.

“It was an island in crisis. It wasn’t just the asylum seekers and refugees but the Nauruans as well who felt that there culture and their country was at risk.

“They didn’t understand what was going on, how long they were going to be here, and you have to remember as well, it’s a population of 10,000 with nearly a thousand refugees and asylum seekers suddenly plonked in their midst.

“It’s a very poor country, so it was a real sense of a society in absolute crisis, and an overwhelming psychological disturbance in the asylum seekers and refugees. It was quite horrific to experience.

Unfortunately and despite the fact that back in February 2015 in Australia the Government tabled the Forgotten Children’s Report – the first recommendation in that report was that all children in detention on Nauru should be released into the Australian community within four weeks of that report– there are still children in detention centres on Nauru and they’re held in the processing centre number three which is where the families and the children are.

“They’re seeing their parents in states of depression, engaging in acts of self harm and suicide. The children are following suit. They’re sewing their lips together. They’re taking part in daily protests. The parents talked a lot about feeling hopeless because they don’t have any agency, they can’t look after their children.

“When they go out there’s a lot of bullying, a lot of violence towards the children. The parents are not happy so they’re keeping the kids away from school.

“The detention centres have closed down the school within the centres to try and encourage them to go out. So these kids are just wandering around on this phosphate rubble all day within the detention centres.

“They’re growing up very scarred, very unhappy kids who are going to have a lifetime of psychological disorder. It’s going to be a long time before any sort of work can be done with those kids to get them any where near back to a normal way of being.

“ It’s absolutely horrendous. There’s no way that those kids can develop normally.” - RNZI