UN, doctors hammer Australia over refugee camps

SYDNEY: Australia’s underpressure government received a double blow yesterday from the United Nations and a leading doctors’ group over harsh treatment of refugees on offshore island camps.

In an unusual broadside, a top official for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees accused ‘bureaucrats and politicians’ of overruling doctors and putting lives at risk at camps on Nauru and Manus.

Australia holds unauthorised migrants who try to reach the island continent by boat in ‘offshore detention’ — part of a harsh policy designed to deter would-be asylum-seekers.

UNHCR’s Catherine Stubberfield decried the policy as ‘sold too simplistically’ and said changing it was now a matter of ‘basic human treatment and decency.’

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) on Monday also threw its voice behind those calling for the government to change course.

Around 160 people remain on the island of Nauru — including women and children — and it is believed as many as 600 men are still in transition centres on Manus after the Australian-run camp there was closed late last year.

The minority government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has quietly agreed to transfer children off Nauru, but is under fierce pressure to close it completely.

Doctor and independent member of parliament Kerryn Phelps on Monday put forward legislation requiring the temporary transfer from Nauru or Manus of anyone assessed as needing medical treatment as well as the temporary transfer of all children and their families from Nauru. — AFP