Hidden camera footage, obtained for the documentary film "Chasing Asylum," shows the grim conditions in Nauru. When images from inside the center started appearing in The Guardian and other media outlets in Australia, it was apparent detainees were covertly filming their surroundings to expose the austere living conditions. As a result, guards began searching the facility and confiscating devices. "They were photographing foodstuffs that weren't up to standard, they were photographing toilets which weren't up to standard," Appleby said. "Then all those phones were confiscated."The staff didn't actually confiscate them all because they couldn't find them all, he added. "But they tried their darnedest."Although PNG police were brought in to search the compound, Appleby said detainees were resourceful. "They might dismantle the phone and part of it might live in one compound, and part of it might live in another. You wouldn't find the entire phone itself."Their goal was to get messages out to activists in Australia, though it was against regulations of the camp at the time.
"It was that cat and mouse game of trying to find the communication device that the guys were using," Appleby said, Boochani describes the ordeal he went through to keep the phone he sold his clothes for, Guards raided his room twice, "The first time they took my phone and told me I don't have rights to a phone and they threatened me that it would be bad for my future if I had a phone," he aquaforest iphone case recalled, "The second time they couldn't find my phone, I have to say that I was working under the blanket -- that was my office."Since the court decision lifting the phone ban in April, Boochani has been in constant contact with journalists and refugee advocates outside PNG, writing about life inside Manus for news outlets such as The Guardian and New Matilda and posting photos from inside the facility on his Facebook page..
Phones are a lifeline in detention. Without them, asylum seekers face isolation and a lack of independence. They're still able to communicate with their immigration lawyers through interpreters. But Thom from Amnesty International says access to computers and landline phones is "very limited.""Are they always working? No," Thom said. "If they're broken and they're in a remote place like Christmas Island, how quickly can you repair a phone?"Refugees in detention have access to landline phones, though Amnesty International says phones are not always working.
He describes visiting the Curtin detention center in far outback Western Australia, where he was shown a bank of 10 public phones, only to be told by one detainee that just one of those phones was working, in a center housing 500 detainees, The DIBP would not comment on the maintenance of aquaforest iphone case phones or whether calls were charged to detainees, Both Thom and Senator Hanson-Young said the other major risk is the monitoring of phone and internet use, "Everyone is very well aware that everything that they access, all of their Facebook pages, everything is monitored," Hanson-Young told me..
That same level of threat and intimidation -- that everything they do online will be monitored -- goes for staff as well, Hanson-Young said. "I've spoken to many whistleblowers who say that they're reminded every day by their managers before they walk through the gates, that they're not allowed to talk about what they see..and to be aware that everything is watched," she said. While Thom said it's difficult to know exactly what activity is monitored, refugees still have concerns about how they connect with the outside world. How do you stay in touch with your family when someone is always watching what you say?.
