Tensions rise as scared refugees refuse to leave PNG camp

sydney: Tensions are rising after food and water supplies were cut at the Australia-run refugee detention camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, where hundreds of asylum seekers are due to be relocated to a local town.

The Manus Island camp is one of two Pacific centres where asylum seekers, who arrive by boat, are sent for processing.

The refugees have been asked to relocate from the camp – which is scheduled to shut down tomorrow after PNG’s Supreme Court deemed it illegal – to temporary residential facilities in the island’s main town of Lorengau.

But the refugees, who have been held since 2014, have refused to move and say they are afraid of being attacked by locals.

“The local people are very angry with the Australian government and are preparing (with) weapons, knives ... They are determined to prevent the (local) government from relocating the refugees,” Behrouz Boochani, a refugee at the Manus camp, said.

He said the locals were worried about having 600 foreign men in their small island community.

“They are planning to block the road and do a protest tomorrow. Last night, two local young drunk men threw stones into the detention centre,” he said.

Yesterday, authorities had shut the camp’s dining room and cut off water supplies, Boochani said, giving the refugees food parcels and water bottles to last two days. Tomorrow, the electricity is due to be cut off.

The practice of holding asylum seekers at the centre has been criticised by the United Nations and rights groups.

Papua New Guinea authorities have deployed extra police, including a paramilitary force, to the island after reports of locals threatening to use violence to stop the relocation.

The safety of refugees and government staff "is not to be taken for granted given the tension that is now being expressed by the locals on Manus Island”, police commis- sioner Gari Baki said yesterday.

A “small disgruntled faction among the refugees ... is creating uncertainty,” he said in a statement. He also asked the locals “not to create any uncertainty and let the transfer of the refugees be done as smoothly as possible”.

“Last week, Charlie Benjamin, the governor of Manus Island, warned that many locals feared they would be in danger from the refugees and were threatening to arm themselves to stop the men from moving in,” Baki said.— dpa