Nauru police leaned on Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and recommended using the country’s cybercrime legislation to crack down on speech attacking politicians, leaked emails show.
More than 280,000 emails alleged to belong to the Nauru Police Force were leaked earlier this week, purportedly in protest at Australia’s use of the island nation for immigration offshore processing. Some of these emails showed police staff mocking an asylum seeker who had self-mutilated and efforts to avoid scrutiny at the refugee processing centres.
These documents also show Nauru police seeking to crack down on speech criticising Nauru politicians by requesting that Meta remove content from Facebook, sometimes successfully, while other times recommending that citizens be prosecuted.
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