"Abusive" searches at Nauru camp under fire
A refugee advocate says women asylum seekers are being subjected to abusive and intrusive searches as they return to the camp for families and single women on Nauru.
Transcript
A refugee advocate says women asylum seekers are being subjected to abusive and intrusive searches as they return to the camp for families and single women on Nauru.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition says two women have lodged complaints about Wilson Security guards using security wands in an abusive manner.
Mr Rintoul told Sally Round up to six other women have also been subected to abusive searches since a new search rule was brought in recently.
IAN RINTOUL: Initially it's done with a metal detector, with a metal wand. That's alright, but because they are required to spread their legs and their arms, that in itself has provided an excuse for male guards to use those wands in a particularly intimidatory, threatening, humiliating way by putting the wand between the woman's legs, by passing the wand repeatedly over the breast area. It's very clear from the reports that we've got the nature of those searches.
SALLY ROUND: So it's more than just what you might receive say if you're going through a metal detector at an airport?
IR: Yes. Previously, though wands have been used on people coming back into the detention centre, this goes far beyond that. I mean people knew previously that there were wands used and they were used, I understand, in a very similar fashion to maybe at an airport if you had something on you or if you set off the alarm, but this new rule actually requires women to actually spread their legs and their arms and, as I said, it's not just female guards that are doing the wanding although in the two cases that have been reported to us it is female guards who have required the women to actually lift their shirt and lift their bra. But in those two cases it was done within view of male guards even though there is a room now with a door on it, but that wasn't used in these two cases although in one of the cases the woman seemed to be playing up to the other male guards saying, well now you've lifted your shirt, you're going to take everything off, you can go into the room and take everything off.
SR: What have they been told they're being searched for?
IR: Informally they've been told they're looking for smartphones, they're looking for perfume, they're looking for lighters and they continue to confiscate any fruit or food that is actually brought back into what used to be the detention centre. It remains a detention centre and that's one of the things we're highlighting. It makes a mockery of some idea that there is an open centre.
SR: Because the government said that they were opening the centres, six weeks or so ago now.
IR: Nothing has changed, nothing has changed. Even though they made an announcement that it was going to be an open centre and all these people were actually going to be processed. Perhaps 30 or 40 people have been processed but a couple of hundred people remain completely unprocessed with no notification of their determinations, their refugee determinations. In terms of the centre itself actually nothing has changed. They are subjected to searches in and out of the detention centre. They're not allowed to take anything out, they're not allowed to bring anything in. Smartphones for example are still banned, they're not allowed to bring food or fruit or anything that's bought outside the detention centre so I mean it's a mockery of the Nauru government's announcement.
Wilson Security has not responded yet to a request for comment.
To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following:
See terms of use.