Police storm Manus

PAPUA New Guinea police began forcibly removing refugees from a shuttered Australian camp on Manus Island yesterday, detainees said, as authorities tried to end a standoff that has drawn world attention to Canberra’s tough policy on asylum-seekers.

Refugees barricaded in the abandoned camp said authorities began pulling belongings from their rooms and shouting at them to get into buses lined up to take them to transition centres elsewhere on Manus.

Australian activist group GetUp said Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who had been a spokesman for the detainees, was led away by police.

“Men are being forcibly removed by bus, apparently to other centres,” GetUp spokeswoman Zoe Edwards said.

Detainees tweeted that dozens of men were taken away, despite PNG Police Commissioner Gari Baki saying this week that no force would be used.

Mr Boochani had written on Twitter from in the camp that “police have started to break the shelters, water tanks and are saying, ‘Move, move’.”

“Navy soldiers are outside the prison camp. We are on high alert right now. We are under attack,” he said.

He said two refugees needed urgent treatment for health issues.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reaffirmed his government’s stance that none of the refugees who were sent to the camp for trying to reach Australia by boat would be brought to Australia.

The camp, established alongside another on Nauru under Canberra’s immigration policy, was shut on October 31 after a PNG court ruled it was unconstitutional. Around 600 men refused to move to three PNG-run transition centres on the island, despite limited food supplies and Australia cutting off water and electricity.

The detainees said they feared hostility from locals outside the camp, and said the new centres were not fully operational, with a lack of security, sufficient water or electricity.

Some 200 men have moved to the new facilities, but the rest stayed put, despite worsening conditions.

“They think this is some way they can pressure the Australian government to let them come to Australia. Well, we will not be pressured,” Mr Turnbull said.

Global rights group Amnesty International said there were “risks of serious injury if the authorities use force” and called for the refugees to be brought to Australia.

Australian Federal Police said it had one liaison officer on Manus, but no personnel were in the camp or involved in the police operation.