Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the last couple of weeks we have heard about the horrifying experience of 23-year old-Abyan, a Somali refugee being held on Nauru. She says that, while on Nauru, she was raped and, as a result, she is now pregnant. Abyan has written:

I was raped on Nauru. I have been very sick. I have never said that I did not want a termination. I never saw a doctor. I saw a nurse at a clinic but there was no counselling. I saw a nurse at Villawood but there was no interpreter. I asked but was not allowed to talk with my lawyer. Please help me.

Abyan reached out to Australian authorities and asked to be brought to Australia so that she could get a termination. Long after her request was made, the Turnbull government finally bowed to immense public pressure and brought her to Australia for medical treatment. But, just days later, the government forced her back to Nauru, she says without her having received the medical treatment or counselling she had asked for.

This is a new low for this government in their relentless persecution of the world's most vulnerable people. Abyan, traumatised, scared and pregnant from being raped, did not receive the care she asked for and now she has been sent back to Nauru—the very place she was brutally assaulted while under Australia's care. Tens of thousands of people around Australia have stood up and shown that they are horrified by this government's endless cruelty to refugees. Minister Dutton must now allow Abyan to access the counselling and medical treatment that she requires. Minister Dutton's first response is to say whenever he is challenged that the other person is lying. He has been shown up to have misled the public before, and if he really believes that that is the case then he should let the media in and show them what is going on in these hellholes.