Nauru, St Helena, website

  
Hello subscribers!

  
A couple of days ago I uploaded a new DT Blog Post. This time it is about Nauru. I can imagine that some of you will never have heard of Nauru, and that would be totally understandable: it’s the least visited country on the planet, the smallest independent island state on Earth (and the third smallest of all nations after the Vatican and Monaco). Its area is just 21 square kilometres and the island’s population currently around 12,000.
  

Tiny as it may be, however, in terms of dark tourism Nauru is quite a biggie! And I had long wanted to visit the place.
  

Nauru has had a turbulent past, one of the worst phases being as a colony of Imperial Germany from the late 19th century until the end of WWI, after which it came under the control of Australia, only to be conquered and occupied by Japan in WWII. After the war Nauru was back in Australian hands until independence in 1968. It then became one of the richest nations in the world for a while – thanks to the phosphate deposits that were strip-mined on the inland plateau. The phosphate, a prized fertilizer, came from millions of years of bird droppings forming fossilized guano (hence some people refer to Nauru as “bird poo island”).
  

But the deposits were finite and soon became almost exhausted. From the 1990s Nauru’s economy collapsed and it became the poorest country in the Pacific. It’s a real-life rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags story!
  

And then came another twist: after Nauru had dabbled in ill-advised investments that sank billions of dollars and then some illegal money laundering ventures, the Australians came to the “rescue” by offering Nauru substantial funding in return for letting them build “offshore” refugee detention camps on the island. This scheme was hailed as the “Pacific Solution” (at least they didn’t use the word “final”). But of course it wasn’t really a solution. The refugees languished in tents in the tropical heat in the post-mining wasteland of interior Nauru. There were suicides, riots and general desperation and consequently loud outcries from human rights organizations. The scheme was stopped and restarted a couple of times, and currently continues on a smaller scale.
  

All this, a post-mining dystopia, colonial and WWII relics, and then those camps, provide this tiny speck in the ocean with a disproportionately large number of dark sites. The new Blog Post offers an overview. Basically it’s a photo essay covering my trip there in August 2024 (the photo above is one of those used in the Blog Post and shows a collapsed old phosphate loading cantilever). Do go and take a look. (And if you then want to know more background info and travel details – go to the all-new and much longer Nauru chapter on my main website.)
  
  

And now for St Helena. I was reminded of Nauru and its being host to Australia’s “Pacific Solution”, when I saw the announcement on Monday by the British government that it plans to transport any new refugees arriving in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT, which includes the military island of Diego Garcia) to the British overseas territory of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic. So is this to be an “Atlantic Solution”?!? The official statement paints it all in rosy colours as a win-win situation much to the benefit of St Helena itself. It was also claimed by the British Foreign Office Minister, when he was questioned in the House of Commons, that the people of St Helena stood behind the scheme.
  

Somewhat sceptical and curious, I then wrote to my contact on St Helena (who runs a local website about the island and who I met up with when I was there in 2018) and enquired. He got back to me saying that no, the islanders had not been informed about this in advance, let alone consulted. Apparently not even the local Legislative Council was given any clue; it had all been schemed behind closed doors between the five St Helena Ministers and the UK government.
  

Once the news was out, there’s apparently been a lot of “fuss” about it in the St Helena community. And in between all the racism that such issues always seem to trigger, there were quite basic but substantial worries: what if? Will the island get the promised millions from the UK even if no refugees are sent there? More importantly, what if they do get sent there, how are they going to be housed, fed, cared for? In all the secrecy there’s been no hint as to whether some sort of contingency plan is in place.
  

So it’s certainly not true that the people of St Helena back this scheme. On the contrary. They are worried. That’s also the big difference to Nauru, where the “Pacific Solution” was welcomed because of the desperately needed funding it brought. St Helena today, however, is not in comparable economic dire straits but a pretty functional close-knit community. Disruptions of this could have profound effects.
  

I’ve asked my contact to keep me in the loop about any further developments, and on future occasions I may report more as I get information from on the ground.
  
  

On a lighter note, I can report that I’ve also finished and uploaded several new/updated chapters for Australia on my main website, namely a new Australia chapter as such, plus additional/expanded subchapters for Maralinga (cf. this earlier Blog Post), Woomera, Melbourne, Old Melbourne Gaol and Port Arthur.
  

I am also happy to report that all the technical issues that came about in the wake of recent system upgrades in my main website’s back end have meanwhile been resolved. So all links, past, present and emerging, should now be working properly again. Some, due to redirection measures, may take a little longer to load, but as far as I can see they all get to their intended target now. No more 404s galore. If you happen upon any links that do not work, please let me know.
  

But with this I shall come to a close. Sorry that this Newsletter issue got a bit longer than usual, but there was a lot to report. And don’t forget to check out the new Nauru Blog Post.  

  
Have a good week!
  

Best wishes,
  

Peter