Manus living conditions don’t have to be that way – just tidy up

I AM not sure who’s lazier: the illegal immigrants at Manus Island, or the activists shocked that no one will clean their own mess?

On Tuesday The Sydney Morning Herald showed “shocking footage” of “filthy bathrooms” at the decommissioned detention centre on Manus Island which 370 illegal immigrants are refusing to leave.

Filmed by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the video opens with shots of dirty urinals, a long wash basin littered with empty water bottles and a floor dotted with discarded paper.

Now, excuse me, but exactly who did the illegal immigrants think should clean their toilets, remove their bottles and pick up their dropped paper? Are they really too bone idle to do a little scrubbing and picking up after themselves?

For activists to promote this as evidence of the alleged horror at Manus suggests many of them were too pampered at home to do a little cleaning.

It’s not as if the illegal immigrants are even forced to live at the centre, either.

In fact, it’s been closed and had the power cut off, with authorities begging the men to join more than 250 other illegal immigrants at new accommodation closer to town, with power and running water.

I know it’s not flash by Australian standards, but it’s surely better than what hundreds of thousands of real refugees around the world must put up with.

Oh, yes, we’re told many of these men at Manus are real refugees, too.

But then SBS parades one of their spokesmen. “We have no food supply at all,” Ravinder Singh told SBS.

SBS reported: “Ravinder and another Punjabi man, Manjit Singh, have been staying at Manus Island detention centre for four years now.”

First, of course, there is indeed food at the alternative accommodation. But wait: two Sikhs from the Punjab, a Sikh haven, claim to be refugees? They cannot live in a democratic Indian state where 15 million other Sikhs live in peace?

There may very well be real refugees among these men, but when activists and journalists toy with our credulity like this, how can we believe anything else about the “horror” on Manus? Same with the Greens, claiming the Turnbull Government is actually “torturing” the men at Manus.

Can I ask those Punjabis, at least: if you truly are being starved and tortured, why don’t you just go back home?