Refugees’ fate is to our shame
THE Australian Government’s failure to find an enduring solution for the people it has detained on Manus Island will have potentially devastating consequences.
During four years of imprisonment at Australia’s hands, they have witnessed murder and lived through assaults and armed attacks.
They have been used as political pawns, denied adequate medical support, and consistently demonised by the Australian Government. They are our country’s political prisoners.
And now the Government wants to abandon them to fend for themselves in Papua New Guinea.
Already the compounds are being torn down and men are being forced into increasingly cramped spaces, before most are abandoned in the nearby town of Lorengau in October.
Lorengau is a town of 6000 people.
Resources and job opportunities are scarce. It is poorly equipped to handle hundreds of refugees.
On the streets of Lorengau the locals have a mixed response to the detainees. While many have embraced them and welcomed them into their homes, others are resentful.
The locals were not consulted by their government before the centre was established, and many are upset that their lives have been disrupted.
Meanwhile, the few men who have been resettled in Port Moresby live in fear of violence and many are scared to leave their accommodation.
The simple fact is that Papua New Guinea is not a safe place for the people currently detained on Manus Island.
If they are released into the community the likelihood is that people will come to harm.
Despite the department’s notorious secrecy about the centre, the head of the Australian Border Force conceded during a Senate Estimates hearing that Manus Island is a “febrile environment” and noted the “rising tensions” across the island. In those same hearings, the Government’s cognitive dissonance was on clear display, as the department repeatedly said the fate of its detainees, including where they will sleep after October, was a “matter for the PNG government”.
But Peter Dutton’s willingness to accept the proposed settlement of a class action involving 1905 Manus Island detainees shows beyond doubt that he is responsible for their fate. It also demonstrates the lengths to which he will go to keep the horrors of offshore
Nick McKim
detention hidden from the world.
Manus Island was never a suitable place for an Australian detention centre, and it is even less suitable as a dumping ground for men who sought Australia’s help.
We know the tensions between detainees and the Manus Island locals have already had tragic consequences. Reza Berati was murdered in riots at the centre in 2014, and a further 70 people were injured.
A Senate inquiry found the riots were caused by the failure to process asylum seekers’ claims, and that the violence was “eminently foreseeable”.
Most recently, a dispute over a soccer field between detainees and naval personnel escalated dramatically, to the point where a machine gun and a rifle were fired into the detention centre. In response, all we got from Minister Dutton were lies, cover-ups and smears.
It took five weeks before his department admitted that nine people were injured in the attack, contradicting the statement they made on the night. Mr Dutton and his predecessor Scott Morrison’s record of management of the Manus Island centre has been nothing short of shameful.
They reached out a hand to Australia for help, as the Refugee Convention says they could. For that, they were used as pawns in Labor and the Coalition’s xenophobic political games.
Australia abandoning people in Papua New Guinea is not any kind of solution, and the men are being offered no kind of choice.
Most have been found to be refugees, which means they have a well-founded fear of persecution in the countries they fled.
Some have been denied refugee status, despite serious concerns with how the PNG government defines refugees.
Manus Island is a powder keg. The Australian Government cannot light a fuse and then run away.
The only solution is to bring these men to Australia, where they can be supported and looked after, in line with our legal and moral responsibilities. Nick McKim is a Greens senator for Tasmania.