Ekip
29 October 2015•Update: 29 October 2015
By Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE
The Nauru government has strongly defended its ban on Australian media, arguing that journalists who have been critical of the Pacific island country this week posses “an air of great arrogance” when reporting on the home of one of Australia’s offshore detention centers.
Journalists fail to question the claims of “refugee advocates and Australian lawyers”, Nauru's justice minister David Adeang claimed in a statement.
“Truth doesn’t suit the activist journalists. They need to paint a different picture to justify their political agendas and their own lack of fact-checking and poor journalism,” he added.
The country has been caught up in a series of scandals involving detention center inmates, the latest of which claims a 23-year-old Somali woman was raped on the island.
Australia's immigration department has been accused of failing to act on three requests from senior medical staff on Nauru to move the pregnant refugee to Australia when she sought a termination.
In the statement, Adeang attempted to underline that Nauru is a "safe” place to be.
"Refugees are not being raped, they have freedom, many are happy and making the best of their situation, and life on Nauru is peaceful with locals and refugees living, in the main, harmoniously."
Adeang said that the Nauru government is under no obligation to answer the "ridiculous" questions posed by Australian media, despite Australian taxpayers paying billions of dollars to maintain the detention centre and an estimated $25.2 million in foreign aid - officially called Official Development Assistance - to Nauru in 2015–16.
Australia’s foreign aid budget was slashed in May.
Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines and Vietnam had their aid cut by 40 percent while Papua New Guinea, Australia's largest aid beneficiary, lost just 5 percent and there were no cuts in aid to Nauru or Cambodia, both of which are involved with Australia's regional processing centres and the resettlement of asylum seekers.
Early this month Chris Kenny, former Liberal Party adviser and associate editor of the Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper The Australian, was the first journalist to be grated access to Nauru for over 18 months.
On Wednesday, Adeang declined calls for greater media access to the country, saying: "Nauru is not a state of Australia!"
"The Australian media approaches us with great arrogance and an air of racial superiority, which is highly offensive to us... They do not show us the respect of a sovereign nation and in return we have little respect for them."
