Foreign journalists are bullying Nauru, the Pacific nation that houses one of Australia’s offshore detention facilities, “based on their belief that our differences make us inferior”, its president has claimed.
Reports about the conditions faced by asylum seekers on the island – including of women sleeping in jeans for fear of being raped, threats of arrest for protests and beatings by locals – were based on a sense of superiority among foreign journalists, president Baron Waqa wrote on Monday in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
“To [journalists], our differences are something to be scorned, and our simpler lifestyle provides them with an opportunity to mock us without care or consequence,” he said. “By another name it is pure bullying.”
Waqa also defended Nauru’s legal system following a crisis last year that led to the resignation of the country’s Australian chief justice and sole magistrate, amid claims of political interference in the judicial system.
Australia’s department of foreign affairs has said the treatment of the two Australians gave “rise to concerns about the rule of law in Nauru and Nauru’s reputation internationally”.
But Waqa said his government had increased the number of supreme court justices in the country and reformed a system which “for many years ... allowed a few people to make considerable wealth and wield too much power”.
He dismissed reports of endemic sexual and physical violence against asylum seekers, including children, arguing the standards in detention were “world class and far exceeds the standard of many refugee camps across the world”.
“Asylum seekers enjoy an ‘open centre’ policy and are regularly seen swimming, dining out and enjoying a lifestyle that is safe, far safer than the lands they left,” he said.
Few foreign journalists have been able to access Nauru since the government raised the price of a visa for journalists from $200 to $8,000 in January last year.
Recently, restrictions on access to Facebook and other social media on the island – limiting the ability of asylum seekers to communicate with the outside world – have earned a rebuke from the US state department.
Since 2012 the Australian government has sent asylum seekers headed for Australia by boat to Nauru to have their claims processed. About 400 have been found to be refugees, with some 600 awaiting determination.
