Survey backs call for NZ to speak up over Nauru
Amnesty International says most New Zealanders want this country to take a stronger stance over Australia's offshore detention camps.
Transcript
Amnesty International says most New Zealanders want this country to take a stronger stance over Australia's offshore detention camps.
Amnesty has this week issued a report called Island of Despair, detailing what it says is the severe suffering of those detained at the Australian run camps on Nauru.
The human rights group says the hundreds of people, including children, being held there, continue to face horrific sexual and physical abuses, while mental health issues are worsening.
Amnesty New Zealand's executive director, Grant Bayldon told Don Wiseman that they commissioned research company UMR to canvas views on the reports of abuse on Nauru.
GRANT BAYLDON: The research that Amnesty International conducted looked at a few issues regarding Australia's use of offshore detention and what New Zealander's views of it were, so this was a scientific study that's representative of the New Zealand population. One of the really striking findings was that 79 percent of New Zealanders believe that the New Zealand government and the Prime Minister should take a stronger stance speaking out against evidence of abuses going on in Australian offshore detention centres and that covers New Zealanders and detention as we know it on Christmas Island and also asylum seekers there and on Nauru and on Manus, so really clearly a high level of concern from New Zealanders about Australia's policies and a desire for the New Zealand government to be stronger.
DON WISEMAN: Those figures were quite emphatic weren't they, 79 percent?
GB: They absolutely were and really we've got a situation where the public opinion is very strong on this and on the New Zealand government speaking out but the response from the New Zealand government has been if anything, totally the opposite so the Prime Minster John Key has never once acknowledged that there's anything even wrong with Australia's offshore detention, in fact his response just over the last day to revelations, fresh revelations of what's happening on Nauru is that he met with the Nauru president at the Pacific Island forum and was assured that the detention centre there was professionally run, now as we know something being professionally run can be professionally run and and professionally abusive and that's what's going on there right now so we're not seeing the strong stance from the New Zealand government that New Zealanders clearly want it to take.
DW: The people surveyed, they want to see what happen?
GB: The survey focused on people's views about offshore detention, clearly an overwhelming majority wanted the New Zealand government to speak out more strongly as we talked about but also an almost two thirds majority also believed that Australia's system of offshore detention shouldn't exist in the first place for detainees and asylum seekers, where people are kept away from medical professionals, human rights, experts, lawyers, family networks and so on so there's a really clear message there for the Australian government that New Zealanders really are concerned about its use of offshore detention and believe that it should end.
DW: Australia's system of course has its defenders with I think the Australian Newspaper describing the detention camps as the envy of the world recently.
GB: There's some particularly bizarre claims about those and any kind of reading of Amnesty International, other people's reports, of what's really going on on Nauru but also on the other centres, you'd have to have a pretty twisted understanding of basic compassion to think that that was the envy of the world where people are being systematically abused and denied their rights, are in just crushing conditions, losing all hope, and these are people who haven't done anything wrong they've just tried to get themselves and their families to safety to be able to restart their lives, I don't think that's the sort of thing that New Zealanders would want to emulate at all.
To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following:
See terms of use.