It's not just that conditions in the Nauru detention camp for refugees seeking asylum in Australia are abysmal, violent, and occasionally fatal to occupants - it's that the Australian government knows it, and keeps it that way as policy to deter other asylum seekers.  That is the stunning accusation from the world's top two human rights watchdogs.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch sent undercover investigators into Nauru, because the government turned down or ignored the groups' requests to visit detainees.  Despite the draconian restrictions put on the camp by Australian and Nauru authorities - which regularly ban journalists and cut off access to social media - they were able to speak with more than 80 detainees. 

They heard of refugees suffering regular harassment from locals, and poor medical treatment.  Many had been robbed by locals, some violently.  One man was hit in the head with a machete.  Women have been raped.

"People here don't have a real life.  We are just surviving.  We are dead souls in living bodies," one man told researchers. "We are just husks.   We don't have any hope or motivation."

One woman with a chronic illness told the investigators she develop lumps in her breasts, throat, and uterus - but was forbidden from completing treatment at a hospital in Australia and forced back to Nauru:  "When I was in Australia, my doctor told immigration that I needed surgery for my breasts, but they still sent me back.  My problems deteriorated," she continued, "They gave me some pills, but they are not working, and I am in constant pain and cannot eat anything."

Children are least able to deal with the cruelty.  They are reduced to soiling their bedding and clothing, withdrawing from interactions with others, and openly discussing suicide - even children as young as ten years old.  Children stopped going to what passes as school.

"What's going through the mind of a 10-year-old who is thinking about killing herself?" asked Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Division senior counsel Michael Bochenek.  "In my experience there is no other developed country that I can think of who has pursued this course of conduct with people who are fleeing persecution, who are seeking freedom, who are accused of no crime," Mr. Bochenek said to the US news channel CNN.  "There is no parallel for this."

A man and woman in the camp set fires to themselves in separate incidents earlier this year.  The deaths served as a triggering event which contributed to several other refugees committing acts of self harm or suicide attempts. 

"I've been doing this work for 15 years, covering mainly war zones and closed countries and I think I've seen my fair share of human rights abuses and injustice," said Amnesty researcher Anna Neistat.  "But the level of secrecy and the fact that these abuses are perpetrated not in the context of a war zone, not in context of an inherently oppressive government cracking down on its citizens, but that these abuses are perpetrated or condoned by Australia, and against the most vulnerable people, some of whom fled the most oppressive conflict areas in the world."

"It seems to be a very deliberate policy to maintain a certain level of cruelty," said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia.  "I can't think of many other countries who would go to such lengths to inflict this level of suffering on people."

The Immigration Department said Amnesty and HRW should have contacted it first before going forward and releasing the report.