REFUGEES’ SELF-DESTRUCTION ANALYSIS
It is a moral responsibility to narrate and reveal the refugees’ painful experiences of human rights violations, and thereby bring about both individual healing and a healing of the refugee community. Island of Despair enumerated and described numerous refugees’ self-harming experiences on Nauru caused by their struggle to bear with the indefinite detention life. The report lets its audience witness how frequent and prevalent it has been for refugees to commit suicide, and attracts public awareness regarding the irrefutable evidence of life on Nauru driving the refugees insane. Zelizer indicated how these past self-harming experiences compel us to believe that these self-harming behaviours still exist…show more content… Island of Despair disclosed that a pregnant refugee tried to kill herself because she felt homeless on Nauru, and she did not want to bring her baby into this world. Even a 13-year old refugee child knew how to kill himself with a knife, with petrol, or by trying to drown himself in the sea. These scenes are devastating. How could the Australian Government continue allowing more and more vulnerable refugees to destroy their life without intervention? How could Australia, as one of the most advanced countries, fail to protect the life of these vulnerable subjects? As one of the refugee victims indicated, you would just get just one bullet or a bomb in Iraq, yet you would be dying a thousand times in the Nauru detention centres. The juxtaposition of the powerful Australian Government and the hopeless vulnerable refugees demands the need of assistance from the audience. The audience are morally motivated to take actions for the sake of questioning the appropriateness of the detention policy and urging the Australian Government to amend the detention policy in favour of the
