Court rejects bid to restore services to PNG camp
Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Supreme Court rejected an application on Tuesday to restore water, electricity and food supplies to an Australian-run detention center for asylum seekers where nearly 600 men have been barricaded for a week.
The men in the remote Manus Island facility have defied attempts by Australia and PNG to close the camp, refusing to move to three transit centers despite having little food or drinking water.
The men, who include asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria, were last given food on October 29 and have been relying on sporadic aid from Manus island locals.
Dozens of them also need medical help, three asylum seekers said, in a stand-off that the UN has described as a “looming humanitarian crisis.”
The men have repeatedly said they would not move to the transit camps because they feared PNG residents on the island may attack, or that they will be resettled elsewhere in PNG or another developing nation.
The court rejected the challenge on behalf of one of the detainees because it said power, water and food were available at the three transit centers, Ben Lomai, a lawyer for the detainee who lodged the application, told Reuters.
Kate Schuetze, Pacific researcher for rights group Amnesty International, warned conditions could deteriorate “catastrophically.”
“The lives of these men, who are only asking for their rights to dignity and safety, are at serious risk,” Schuetze said in a statement.
Several of the detainees told Reuters PNG’s navy had blocked access for islanders trying to deliver supplies in the past few days. Representatives for PNG Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the claim.
Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran who has been detained on Manus island for more than four years, said 90 of the men were sick and required “urgent” medical treatment.
“They have infection, stomachache and diarrhoea because of dirty water,” Boochani told Reuters.
Despite the conditions, several of the men said they would continue to defy efforts to get them to leave, frustrating Australia’s attempts to close one of two controversial detention centers it uses to detain asylum seekers who arrive by boat.