Nauru makes Australia pay dearly for last Iraqi refugee

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Monday October 2, 2006

Sydney- Nauru on Tuesday revealed plans to blackmail Australia into resolving the fate of the last Iraqi refugee detained on the tiny Pacific island under Canberra's controversial Pacific Solution to unwanted arrivals. Nauruan Foreign Minister David Adeang told Australia's ABC Radio that by charging up to 100,000 Australian dollars (75,000 US dollars) a month for keeping Mohammed Sagar in custody it would force Canberra to terminate his five-year sojourn on the island.

Sagar is the last of 1,500 mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers turned away from Australia's bleak immigration detention centres and shipped to even-bleaker ones offshore.

The bulk of those in either Nauru or Papua New Guinea (PNG) were taken off a Norwegian container vessel, the MV Tampa, that in August 2001 was refused permission to land on Australia's Christmas Island the 438 asylum seekers it had picked up from their crippled boat in the Indian Ocean.

"This is a matter still not resolved," Adeang said. "It's still a matter we are in discussion about with the Australian government, particularly the new visa arrangements we devised at the cabinet level to encourage Australia to find a permanent resolution of Mr Sagar's resettlement options."

Sagar has been granted refugee status by Australia but has been denied entry to the country because he is deemed a security risk. No reason has been given for this classification.

He refuses to be returned to Iraq and stays in Nauru because no other country is prepared to take him in.

Adeang said Sagar, 30, was not considered a risk by Nauru and was allowed to move freely on the 21-square-kilometre speck midway between New Zealand and Hawaii. The 12,000 inhabitants of Nauru, once the world's richest country per capita, now live off handouts from Australia and occasional contributions from Taiwan.

In recompense for diplomatic recognition, Taiwan last month paid for the leasing of an aircraft so Air Nauru could fly again.

"Sagar has been here five years free of incidents," Adeang said. "Mr Sagar was recently employed at the local university centre and right now I think he's engaged by one of our departments to set up a (computer) network."

Sagar became the last of the Pacific Solution remnants earlier this year when his countryman, Mohammad Faisal, was declared suicidal and flown to Brisbane for treatment. He too had been on Nauru for five years, refusing voluntary repatriation to Iraq and barred from Australia because of his security classification.

Most of the 1,500 asylum seekers processed in Nauru or PNG have been resettled in New Zealand or Australia.

The Pacific Solution is still government policy - and is credited with stemming a flow of asylum seekers that in early 2001 was running at 500 a month. The asylum seekers made it to Indonesia, where with the complicity of local authorities they paid for berths on fishing boats to be taken to Australia.

Under Australia's mandatory detention policy, all those arriving without a visa are locked up until their cases are processed. Most cases are settled within a few months, but those who challenge the decision can appeal - a process that can keep them incarcerated for years.

Under the Pacific Solution, those arriving by boat are sent offshore.

Sagar, who has described himself as a "dead living thing," hopes to be taken in by a third country, but admits this is unlikely because of the adverse finding against him by Australia's spy agency ASIO.

It costs Australia more than 1 million Australian dollars (750,000 US dollars) a month to keep the Nauru facility open, but says the cost is worth it both for its deterrent value and as a precaution against a new inflow of asylum seekers paying people smugglers for a passage across the Indian Ocean from Indonesia.

If the Nauru government can also get 100,000 Australian dollars (75,000 US dollars) a month for keeping Sagar confined, the near-bankrupt island nation could make another million a year from its marooned Iraqi.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency