Boat carrying asylum seekers.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Refugee children on Nauru Island reach out via Facebook in an effort to share their stories with the world. A Facebook page called Free the Children NAURU was created by refugee children living on the island in an effort to raise awareness to the refugee situation in Australia.
Nauru is a small island located in the Pacific Ocean and it is being used by the Australian government to indefinitely detain 655 asylum seekers out of which 88 are children. Australia is one of few democratic countries to have government policies that allow for the indefinite detention without trial for a certain category of people. In Australia’s case, these people are asylum seekers and they are currently being held indefinitely in refugee camps such as the one on Nauru.
The country’s policies regarding the treatment of these refugees have been criticized around the world as being in clear violation with the refugee conventions established by the UN. Statistics show than approximately 90 percent of the people currently being detained in processing centers such as the one on Nauru have legitimate refugee claims.
Some Australians also condemn the treatment of refugees in their country and the Australian Human Rights Commission has even expressed concern for the well-being of the detainees. Refugees must stay in these centers until their asylum requests are processed but that could turn out to be quite a lengthy process and new data shows that the average time refugees spend in detention has increased to 417 days.
Many claim that the treatment of the refugees is inhumane as seeking asylum is not illegal in Australia, regardless of how refugees arrive in the country, as requesting asylum is considered to be a basic human right.
In order to draw attention on poor living conditions in the processing center on Nauru Island as well as the indefinite detention refugees there are being subjected to, the community on Nauru has created a Facebook page that allows children in the camp to share their stories and thoughts with the world.
The page called Free the Children NAURU advocates for the release of Nauru detainees from the processing center and for assistance in their efforts to gain asylum. The page was founded by three children, two of which are currently detained on the island and are aged 12 and 16. A third child involved acts as the page moderator and is not located on the island.
One of the two children on the island has stated that they had set up the page so that their voices could be heard and their situation could be shared with the world.
Image source: www.pixabay.com