Woman Is Second To Set Herself Alight On Nauru

A Somalian asylum seeker is the second person in less than a week to set fire to herself at an Australian immigration detention centre in Nauru.

The 21-year-old is said to be in a critical condition at Royal Brisbane Hospital and had been on 24-hour mental health watch due to previous suicide attempts.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said that the woman, who he named as Hadon or Hodan, had suffered head injuries in November and last week had been among three asylum seekers who had been taken from recuperation in a Brisbane detention centre and flown back to Nauru.

Mr Rintoul said her case "raises particular questions about the duty of care".

Three days earlier, a 23-year-old Iranian man, named Omid, had died in the same hospital after setting himself on fire at the Pacific island camp, which holds asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat.

Australia's policy on asylum seekers has attracted criticism from many groups, including the country's church leaders who have also promised to give sanctuary to those seeking refuge in the country.

The policy sees everyone who arrives seeking asylum is detained and processed in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Those found to be refugees will be resettled in PNG, Nauru or Cambodia.

The two are understood to have been protesting against Australia's harsh policies against asylum seekers, with the woman's actions coinciding with a visit by UN representatives, Nauru's government said.

Australia's immigration minister Peter Dutton blamed refugee advocates and others "who are encouraging some of these people to behave in a certain way, believing that that pressure exerted on the Australian Government will see a change in our policy in relation to our border protection measures".

He repeated his government's insistence that alleviating the plight of those at Nauru and Manus Island would see a flood of asylum seeker boats, saying: "No action (that) advocates or those in regional processing countries take will cause the government to deviate from its course. We are not going to allow people to drown at sea again."

Australia's other offshore immigration camp, which is on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, was judged by a court to be unconstitutionally detaining asylum seekers.

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said he would close the centre, sending Australia scrambling to make other arrangements for the 900 people housed there.