Refugee in PNG camp found dead in ‘suicide’

AN ASYLUM seeker being held on one of Australia’s Pacific island camps was found dead yesterday, rights groups said, in a suspected suicide that has again thrown Canberra’s treatment of refugees into the spotlight.

Australia sends asylum seekers who try to enter the country by boat to processing facilities on Nauru and on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

Conditions in the camps have been widely criticised by refugee advocates and medical professionals, with reports of widespread abuse, self-harm and mental health problems.

Sydney-based Refugee Action Coalition said yesterday that a 32-year-old Tamil man from Sri Lanka took his own life at a hospital Manus Island, where he was being treated for self-harm.

“Once again, such tragedy highlights the acute vulnerability of refugees and asylum-seekers under Australia’s “offshore processing” approach, and the need for proper care,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said yesterday.

A PNG court ruled last year holding people on Manus was unconstitutional, and Canberra is set to shut the detention centre by the end of this month.

It has tried with little success to relocate the detainees to third countries like Cambodia.

Last week, a first wave of refugees departed from the Pacific camps for the US in a deal struck under former President Barack Obama. But it remains unclear what will happen to those not taken by the US.