Nauru's invite "heartening" says Amnesty

Transcript

Amnesty International says it's heartened by Nauru's invitation to international bodies to go to the island and check out its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

Nauru issued the invitation during its human rights review at the United Nations on Tuesday.

Amnesty's Pacific campaigner Rebecca Emery told Sally Round, Nauru appears to have taken some positive steps in the area of human rights since its last review four years ago.

REBECCA EMERY: On the face of it the right things were said, there was dialogue, there were 12 countries who were particularly active with Nauru, calling on the government to respect and protect freedom of expression, freedom of the media. Nauru listened, took those on, made some comments in return. Really with the UPR [Universal Periodic Review] it's all what happens with which recommendations are accepted and then of course the implementation and the progress that happens from now until the next review in four years and that's where organisations like ours really need to keep the pressure on the spotlight on Nauru to make sure the progress that they've signed up to do happens. But our role is to really encourage the Nauru government to be as open as possible to journalists, organisations like ours et cetera because without being open and allowing all sorts of people to come in and have a look at Nauru then things aren't going to improve there.

SALLY ROUND: The Nauru government did though say that their doors were open to international organisations, organisations like yours presumably.

RE: Well we were very pleased to see ... open arms policy were the words that we used and that's very encouraging because we've made several requests in the past to have access to Nauru to go in and see for ourselves what is happening on the ground there so very heartening to see this on an international platform.

SR: So have you been told you can't come in before?

RE: We have made requests to have access to Nauru, we haven't been invited in to date but we're hoping this will change.

SR: The justice minister David Adeang at the UN was at pains to point out that some of the countries who were making recommendations actually had it wrong, that the asylum seekers had freedom of movement around the island, that they weren't being detained so a lot of the criticism I guess were pretty much unfounded.

RE: Well again it's one of the situations of not being able to have access to a country to determine for oneself, whether it be Amnesty or journalists but our understanding that there was a change to an open centre on the 5th of October as far as we know without being able to see firsthand for ourselves this has happened. And also the step to engage 320 community liaison officers is a step in the right direction for increased freedom of movement for asylum seekers.

SR: Nauru also wanted to defend its restrictions on social media sites, saying that this was going to help with protection of women and children on Nauru.

RE: Amnesty whenever this happens anywhere in the world blanket bans like that, is extremely concerned given the freedom of expression issues and the rights for people to be able to communicate with the outside world. On the face of it we'd be concerned it's an excessive and disproportionate restriction but we are keen to have a closer look at the situation that Nauru described in the UPR review for ourselves.