"Country guides" for asylum policy in The Netherlands
When the Dutch psychiatrist Maarten Dormaar (63) set off last summer for the island of Nauru in the western Pacific Ocean, he thought he would be able to put his knowledge and experience to good use in lending assistance to hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi boat refugees staying there. He returned four months later a bitter man, after completing his contract with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). "As my Norwegian predecessor had already observed, you go there with the best intentions of helping refugees, but you quickly conclude that you are participating in a system that only makes people sicker".
The "system" which has so embittered Dormaar is the Australian policy of locking up asylum seekers in detention camps while they wait for the decision on their asylum claims. Various hermitically sealed camps are located far away from the inhabited world, in desert-like areas in western and southern Australia, but for more than a year also on Nauru and Manus Island, which is part of Papua New Guinea.
At the end of the 2001 financial year Australia made an agreement with the governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea to take the asylum seekers. In February last year, there were about 1 500 refugees, now about 400. The so-called "Pacific Solution" was determined after the incident with the Tampa, a Norwegian container ship that at the end of August 2001 rescued about 400 Afghan refugees from a sinking Indonesian fishing vessel near the Australian coast. Despite distress signals and in the face of great international pressure, Australia refused to let them land. Refugees are welcome only by invitation. Since the Tampa, boat refugees who dare to make the crossing on their own initiative, are refused entry into Australia and immediately turned back or locked up in detention camps outside Australia.
As a psychiatrist contracted to the Antonius Hospital in Sneek, Dormaar has years of experience in the reception of asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The critical difference in the Australian approach is the total isolation of the predominantly Afghan and Iraqi refugees on Nauru and elsewhere, he says. "Dutch camps also have refugees with adjustment disorders, and these become greater the longer they are detained and remain in insecurity about their refugee status. But on Nauru, where refugees are treated like prisoners, the mental health problems are much greater and deteriorate much more quickly because people are locked up for longer. Twenty to thirty per cent of adult men have acute complaints, especially depression and anxiety.
People complain of sleeping problems, they worry about their future and the lot of their family back in Afghanistan. They become listless and fall into lethargy. That is also no wonder, given that there is scarcely opportunity to be purposefully busy. They aren't even allowed to cook their own meals, they stay close together in container-like barracks with tin roofs, in tropical temperatures and they are not permitted to leave the camp. They are forced to do nothing."
Nauru with 1,100 inhabitants on an island slightly smaller than Schiermonnikoog, is ecologically laid waste by past Australian phosphate mining. Bare coral rocks decorate the desolated landscape. There is no economic activity of any significance and the government is pretty well broke. "The irony is that medical provisions for asylum seekers are much better than for the Nauruans. The local hospital is short of medical supplies, let alone modern equipment. Medical staff in the refugee camps are not overworked but can do nothing about the root cause of the sickness: the enforced detention."
A private prison firm operates the detention camps on the Australian mainland. On Nauru and on Manus Island management is in the hands of IOM, a Geneva-based international organisation with more than ninety member states. IOM has been involved with immigrant issues since 1951 and is engaged in the reception and movement of migrants throughout the world. That persuaded Dormaar to take the posting with IOM. But now, to put it mildly, he has mixed feelings.
"The IOM has allowed itself to be hired by the Australian government for the implementation of its hardline policy. Now that I have seen the situation on Nauru, I have concluded that IOM has become an accessory to the maintenance of a system, which makes people sick. IOM had better give some more serious thought to its role. The Netherlands as a member state should ring the alarm bell."
Australian medical, human rights organisations and lawyers have in recent times protested frequently against the Australian approach. But the government is not particularly sensitive to that. In the near future, it intends to transport to Nauru and Manus Island, those asylum seekers in Australia who have completed the asylum process and have not been granted permission to stay, and who refuse to return home voluntarily.
The islands are not accessible to human rights activists, journalists and other snoopers. Even Dormaar, who describes his stay on Nauru as a visit to the "Heart of Darkness", had it made clear to him by his IOM superiors that he better not bring out photos or film material about the situation in the camps. After his return he reported his criticism to IOM in Geneva. He was cordially received and heard, he said. But a critical article about his findings on Nauru was turned down for publication in the IOM newsletter.