Refugees At Australian Detention Center Rely on WhatsApp and Smuggled Phones

On the remote island of Manus, home to an Australian detention center, refugees rely on WhatsApp, the data-based texting app, to communicate with the outside world. The refugees caught en route to Australia are some the least connected refugees in the world.

Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, one of the island's refugee inhabitants, traded his clothes and shoes for 50 cigarettes to then buy a beat up cell phone from a smuggler on the island, just off the north coast of Papua New Guinea, reported CNET. When it was later confiscated by guards who had raided his room, he sold more of his things to buy another one. Still, the smuggled phone is next to useless given the island's lagging internet connection.

"Without access to technology the Australian government could do anything to us, even kill us, and no one would know," Boochani told CNET via WhatsApp. He explained how he uses his phone under his bedsheets so no one would see him typing the messages he sends to Australian media outlets via WhatsApp and email.

The phone desert on Manus Island and Nauru, another offshore island refugee camp, is unique. Even Jordanian refugee camps near Syria, some of the most threatened communities in the world, have actual phone coverage, according to Graham Thom, Australia's refugee coordinator for Amnesty International. "It's just bizarre to think people in a refugee camp on the border of the conflict zone have better mobile phone access than somebody who's brought to a detention center in Australia," Thom said.

At Za'atari Refugee Camp in Jordan, for example, refugees use both social media and two-way SMS to communicate. And in Dadaab, Kenya, home to the world's largest refugee camps—a complex of four in total—high speed internet called DadaabNet allows refugees to connect with aid agencies and other refugees, friends, or family. Even at Holot detention center in southern Israel, where many refugees from Eritrea and other African companies are sent, detainees are allowed to keep their cell phones, have internet access, and send photos of their conditions to Israeli media outlets.

Australia runs nine detention centers for immigrants on the mainland, one on Christmas Island, and the facilities on Nauru and Manus Island. When refugees arrive, their phones are taken away, though other detainees, such as soon-to-be-deported criminals, can keep their phones, said Thom.

On Thursday, the Australian government announced that it would be shutting down the Manus Island detention center, but did not indicate when exactly this would happen. But for the island's 854 detainees, it's hardly a relief, especially given the treatment they received on Manus Island and the (even still, unlikely) prospect of going to Australia.

Sudan native Aziz Adams has been detained on Manus for nearly three years. He told CNN he'd been tortured, both mentally and physically, verbally abused, and bore witness to his friends' deaths. The way the Australian government treated him on Manus makes him not want to resettle in Australia. "We started to plead with them, we don't want to go to Australia, please leave us or let other countries like New Zealand or Canada take us, but the Australian government is refusing for those countries," he said.

The abuses taking place at detention centers like Manus, where detainees have limited outside communication, have been kept somewhat under the radar due to Australian legislation passed in 2015. The package of laws, or secrecy provisions, stops workers at the detention center from disclosing information during their work for Australia's Immigration Department. If they spoke out, workers would risk two years in jail.

Despite a momentary loosening of restrictions on Manus Island, cell phones remain banned. Still, detainees do what they can to get the word out on just how bad the conditions are for them. Boochani even describes his Facebook page as a "small media outlet" that provides a glimpse of what life is like for him and other detainees, including graphic images of detainee beatings and updates on court hearings.

"I am writing this letter from inside Manus prison as a refugee who has witnessed assault, death, sexual abuse and torture here," Boochani wrote on Facebook. "The Australian government has kept us here in this remote island for more than three years and is controlling this prison secretly, operating behind the cover of PNG [Papua New Guinea] and controlling us and all information with high security…The results of proper investigations will make clear who is right."