The number of asylum seekers on Nauru appears to have topped 100, with a further two groups of 37 people sent to the Pacific Island.
The people, classified as “unauthorised maritime arrivals”, include 33 Bangladeshis who were found on Christmas Island on 9 May, one of who is a woman. Their boat was destroyed by bad weather.
The second group includes four Vietnamese men who arrived near Broome on 10 May, first revealed by Guardian Australia.
Last week Australian Border Force officials revealed that in March there were 54 people on Nauru who had been transferred from Australia, and this figure increased to 64 as of May.
In response to questions about the arrivals and the total on Nauru, an Australian Border Force spokesperson said: “The ABF does not confirm or comment on operational matters.”
Australia’s policy of deterrence against asylum seeker boats is under strain, with three boats arriving in a single week in May.
On 31 May ABF confirmed that five Rwandan men who arrived at Saibai Island in the Torres Strait were returned to Papua New Guinea, but declined to answer questions about the Broome and Christmas Island cohorts.
Rear Admiral Brett Sonter, the head of operation sovereign borders, said the fate of the 33 people who arrived at Christmas Island is “not something that we would normally talk about in detail”. He took a question from Shoebridge on notice, for the minister to consider a public interest immunity claim.
“I don’t disappear people,” Sonter said. “I make sure that people are safe at all times. And again, I would say: I won’t go into it for operational sensitivities.”
The Greens immigration spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said his questions were met with “offended silence and a refusal to answer”.
“Dodging scrutiny, refusing to answer basic questions and breaching our international obligations to behave with decency to people seeking asylum, it’s been quite a week for the Albanese government,” he told Guardian Australia.
Shoebridge accused the government of “disappearing” asylum seekers who come to Australia, and of displaying a “performative cruelty … that seems to have lost its moral compass”.
Non-citizens who arrive by sea without lawful permission to enter Australia are categorised as “unauthorised maritime arrivals” and are never allowed to settle in Australia even if they are determined to be owed protection under refugee conventions.
Nauru was emptied as an offshore processing centre in June 2023, but was reanimated in September because, as Guardian Australia revealed, a group of 11 asylum seekers had been sent to the island, the first such transfer in nine years.
People smuggling ventures reached Western Australia in November and February, resulting in heightened political criticism by the Coalition against the Labor government’s handling of borders.
There have been four transfers – the largest of 39 people – since September. There are no child asylum seekers and only one woman among the group currently on the island.
At least nine asylum seekers have abandoned their claims for protection and returned to their countries of origin.
The majority of asylum seekers held on Nauru are in the detention centre camp known as RPC1, though different cohorts are separated from each other.
It’s understood about 12 people, Chinese nationals, are living in the Nauruan community.
Home affairs officials told Senate estimates this week asylum seekers “undertake a health and quarantine process on arrival”.
“At RPC1 … the living conditions there are commensurate with the standard that they have been in terms of the accommodation there, having the availability of medical care and of programs and activities to support them during their stay.”
Senate estimates heard Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru has cost, in the nine months to the end of March, $240m this financial year.
The regional processing centre itself has cost $111m, and settlement services $122m.
Shoebridge said that based on 64 people held on the island (the figure at the time of questioning), it was costing Australian taxpayers $4m a year to hold a single asylum seeker offshore.
Shoebridge asked Senator Murray Watt, representing the home affairs minister: “Do you think that’s a sensible expenditure of public money … $4m per person to detain them in Nauru for the year?”
Watt told estimates: “That’s the government’s policy.”
Ogy Simic, head of advocacy for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said his organisation was in regular contact with people on Nauru and he was “extremely concerned” to be hearing about emerging physical and mental health issues that he said were being neglected. He said people were still being denied access to speaking with support agencies and families.
“Just days ago in Senate estimates, when there was the opportunity for transparency, officials refused to answer questions about where the 33 people reported as arriving on Christmas Island in May were being held. Now they have been transferred to Nauru, and even humanitarian organisations such as ASRC are provided no updates or information from the government.
“This is yet another example of the wall of secrecy surrounding Nauru and further evidence the public are being kept in the dark when it comes to the whereabouts and welfare of people who seek safety by sea.”
Simic said the government needed to be transparent about its plans for people held on Nauru, and “reassure the public that this will not be a case of history repeating itself with people enduring years of indefinite detention”.
