PNG cops order asylum seekers to leave shut Australian-run camp
SISTER ANA ROSA SIVORI, Pope Francis’ Thai-based cousin SYDNEY: About 50 asylum seekers left an Australian-run detention camp in Papua New Guinea (PNG) yesterday after police moved into the complex, confiscating food, water and personal belongings from some 310 who remained.
The Manus Island centre was sealed off after a three-week standoff the United Nations has called a “looming humanitarian crisis” as detainees defied attempts by Australia and PNG to close it.
“We have no water,” one of the asylum seekers at the camp said in a text message. “I came back to my room and they took my laptop and money and cigarettes.”
Video shot and posted on Facebook by Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz showed police using a megaphone to tell asylum seekers to leave because their stay at the camp, on land used by the PNG navy, was illegal.
Men boarded buses in footage he posted later on Twitter. The buses took them to alternative accommodation, three sources said.
The camp in PNG and another on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru have been the cornerstones of Australia’s controversial immigration policy, which had been strongly criticised by the UN and rights groups.
Australia opened the camps to stem a flow of asylum seekers making dangerous voyages by boat to its shores.
Under its “sovereign borders” immigration policy, Australia refuses to land asylum seekers arriving by sea, and sends them to the offshore camps instead.
At the camp, witnesses said officials in army fatigues led away Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani, a resident for four years who posts regular social media messages on conditions there.
Boochani later posted that he had been released after being handcuffed for several hours and had left the camp.
“My understanding is that a number of people... have been arrested, including (Boochani),” Australian Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton told SKY News.
Pictures sent via a messaging service showed upturned boxes of food and torn packets of rice and instant noodles and smashed furniture, including broken beds.
Last year, PNG’s Supreme Court ruled that the centre, first opened in 2001, breached its laws and fundamental human rights, leading to the decision to close it.
Asylum seekers fear for their safety if moved to a transit centre on the island, and risk being resettled in PNG or another developing nation permanently. Reuters