Sarah Stephen
After almost three years of imprisonment, those asylum seekers remaining on the Pacific island of Nauru are trapped in a living hell. They have seen some of their fellow prisoners granted refugee status and taken to New Zealand, Australia and other countries. They have seen others decide that it was worth taking the risk to return to the country they fled from, only to find that their lives were still in danger and they were forced to flee again.
There is a mental health crisis among the remaining asylum seekers on Nauru. The more than 250 people, a third of them children, are held in a fenced football ground on the island. They suffer from sleeping problems, nightmares, they are doped up on sleeping pills and anti-depressant medication.
Yet among all these horrors, there is resilience within this group of tortured and deeply traumatised people. Since their arrival in September 2001, asylum seekers have used their initiative to organise a variety of sports activities, craft activities and educational classes.
Equipment is scarce and improvised. The weights for the gym were made from cement. Supporters in Australia regularly send paints, pencils and embroidery cotton.
The detainees paint, sew and do carpentry. Syed Ali, who has since returned to Afghanistan and fled to Pakistan, is a professional embroiderer, and passed on his skills to other asylum seekers.
In 2002, the women produced a display for International Women's Day, which was held in the Nauru township. It helped maintain morale in the midst of hopelessness. Some of it has started to fall to pieces as their numbers decline, and as key people have left. Those that remain are the most desperate and psychologically damaged.
The following comments emailed in letters to supporters in Australia from Nauru asylum seekers give some sense of the role of artistic expression in alleviating the mental anguish and suffering of their uncertain future.
"I can express my personal and other refugees' feelings through paintings."
"I am going to tell you that I am not an artist before this camp. Before [then] I [was] just drawing the blueprint of the embroidery."
" I started in Nauru camp. My daily practising and madness about art shows the result, and now Hassan is also so astonished about me — how I can learn so quickly. He is really surprised. But I just follow the great words of a great artist of the world, Michelangelo, [who] said on the margin of his pupil's drawing 'Draw, Antonio, Draw, Antonio, draw and lose no time!.... Take courage Andreas, trust me you will find joy enough!' I felt Michelangelo said these words to me and I just drawing and drawing... I think art is life and I want to dedicate all my life to art."
[With thanks to Elaine Smith for providing photos and information].
From Green Left Weekly, March 24, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.