The ABC has rejected claims by the Nauru government that children who told of their trauma in detention had been coached and stage-managed.
The broadcaster’s Four Corners program on Monday featured a series of powerful interviews with some of the 128 children in detention and former teachers on the island. The children, many recognised as refugees, have been held offshore on behalf of the Australian government after being refused entry to Australia.
The program, describing conditions at the centre and detailing some of the psychological damage caused by offshore detention, had echoes of the Guardian’s reporting of the Nauru files earlier this year.
The Nauru government said in a statement it “was yet another example of the ABC’s biased political propaganda and lies, and was an insult to the people of Nauru”.
An ABC spokeswoman said: “The Four Corners report ‘The Forgotten Children’ told the story of the more than 100 refugee children who are living on Nauru, recognised as refugees and released from detention but trapped in a legal limbo. It was an important story, of obvious public interest.
“ABC News and Four Corners stand by the report and reject the claims of the government of Nauru. The interviews with the children were conducted remotely by Four Corners and their stories were subjected to the program’s usual rigorous fact-checking processes.
“The program was made in this way because the Nauruan government routinely refuses journalists access to report on offshore processing and charges prohibitive fees for media visas, which are not refunded if the applications are refused.”
The Nauru government said: “It was clear that these children were coached and that the entire process of filming the refugees was stage-managed, as the program has not been to Nauru. Despite this, viewers could clearly see that the refugees featured were well-dressed, well-groomed and healthy.
“We know they will say anything to influence the Australian government to bring them to Australia – a goal that motivated them to pay large amounts of money to people smugglers – which includes making false claims against the Nauruan people.
“The program, which did not seek comment from the government of Nauru before going to air, misrepresented the facts and allowed Save the Children – a discredited organisation that had a clear agenda when on Nauru – to make wild and unsubstantiated claims.”
An Amnesty International report issued on Monday found that Nauru was, in the words of its research director, Dr Anna Neistat, “a system set up to cause deliberate harm to people”.
Malcolm Turnbull rejected Amnesty’s claims that the conditions amounted to torture as “absolutely false”.
