Nauru president planned extra security for Australia deportees

Australia

Sydney –  Nauru’s president said the arrival of immigrants resettled from Australia under a secretive deal would require extra security measures in the Pacific nation, according to an interview transcript with the leader released this week.

President David Adeang also floated the possibility of sending the immigrants — some of whom advocacy groups say are refugees — back to their homelands.Under a contentious deal inked with Australia this year, the island nation will provide 30-year visas for up to 350 immigrants — many convicted of serious crimes — for resettlement on the barren atoll.

Much about the US$1.6 billion arrangement, including how many people will be resettled, has not been disclosed by either government.

In an interview with a Nauru government official that was swiftly deleted from Facebook, Adeang said he had prepared “safety protocols to protect” the migrants and the local population.

“There are extra community safety arrangements that we will bring out to look after our community,” he said in the interview, which was originally posted in February.

The safety measures, he said, would help the immigrants “a little with their movements and to ease the shock of the community”.

Australia’s government had blocked the release of its own translation of a transcript of the interview, according to local media.

On Monday night Australian senators David Shoebridge and David Pocock introduced an English-language copy of the transcript, which had been translated by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, an advocacy group.

Adeang said Nauru would receive three people from Australia within days of the interview.

He also suggested the country could “find a way to return them home” and cut short the 30-year visas they would be granted under the deal.

“We will little by little be able to return these people home if they want that,” he said, adding the people “are not refugees”.

Australia’s government did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on whether asylum seekers or refugees could be included in the transfers to Nauru and why it had not released the transcript.

However, advocacy groups and some lawmakers said refugees were among those included in the arrangement.

Shoebridge, a senator from the Australian Greens party said Adeang’s statement that the deportees were not refugees was “plainly wrong”.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre also raised concerns that any returns could constitute a violation of Australia’s legal obligations, which guarantee that no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The group also said three people transferred so far this year to Nauru under the scheme were locked up in a remote part of the island and that two of them were refugees.

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