NAURU (CU)_ In May 2022, an unidentified gang of hackers published a cache of emails that they said belonged to the Nauru Police Force in opposition to Australia’s use of the territory for offshore immigration processing.
A link to a batch of 285,635 emails that are allegedly police communications from Nauru was published by the hacking website Enlace Hacktivista along with a statement.
The paper asserts that Australia’s usage of the island nation for offshore immigration processing served as a driving force behind a group of hackers’ decision to make these records public. Reports detailing the inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in the detention facility are cited in the statement.
“We decided to hack the Nauru Police Force, who were tasked by the Australian government with policing the island and obtained 285,635 confidential emails related to abuses that they tried to cover up, and we are making them all public.”
The emails demonstrate that refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru continue to make repeated attempts at suicide and other forms of self-harm, including threatening to set themselves on fire. A casual attitude toward the condition of detainees and a reluctance to media scrutiny are also revealed in the internal emails exchanged amongst police.
Email correspondence reveals the force’s response to allegations of abuse in the centres. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture’s visit was announced by a police employee, who also reminded personnel to be ready.
“I am assuming that there will be claims of human torture taken place in the past by the Nauru Police Force or maybe not. Either way best we be ready and confident to answer,” one said.
In other emails, the police commissioner is shown sending the president of Nauru, Lionel Rouwen Aingimea, a request from an Australian journalist regarding a refugee who is supposedly being attacked by men on the island. “Leave it,” he reacted. Don’t respond to them.
The group demands that the new Australian government dismantle facilities, abolish mandatory immigration detention, offer permanent residency to all refugees, look into abuse allegations, and compensate victims.
Leaked emails from the Nauru police show the abhorrent disregard for refugees and asylum seekers detained there, according to the Human Rights Law Centre, an Australian non-governmental organization that has defended refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru’s refugee processing center. The Human Rights Law Centre criticized the Australian government for continuing to use Nauru for offshore processing.
