Migrants’ substitute lodgings defended

AUSTRALIA: Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says asylum seekers occupying an abandoned Australian-run detention camp in Papua New Guinea can relocate to alternative accommodation, challenging United Nations claims that the substitute site is unfinished and inadequate.

Some 380 men have barricaded themselves into Manus Island centre for more than 20 days without regular food or water supplies, defying attempts by Australia and PNG to close the facility. The asylum seekers say they fear for their safety if they are moved to the transit centre, and risk being resettled in PNG or another developing nation permanently.

‘‘There is accommodation that is perfectly acceptable,’’ Bishop said yesterday.

‘‘The standoff on Manus Island can be ended if the men ... move from the regional processing centre to the alternative accommodation that is being offered.’’

The standoff has attracted the attention of the UN, a long-time critic of the conditions experienced by asylum seekers held in Australia’s offshore camps.

Nai Jit Lam, a regional representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told a UN briefing in Geneva on Tuesday that asylum seekers ‘‘are still not adequately provided for outside the centre’’.

‘‘It’s still under construction ... we saw for ourselves that they are trying to complete the site as quickly as possible, but the fact remains that major work is still in progress,’’ Lam said from Manus Island.

Conditions at the abandoned facility were getting worse each day, Lam said, with rubbish and human waste building up and medical supplies already exhausted.

PNG’s Post-Courier newspaper reported that immigration officials would begin evicting the men yesterday, the fourth such deadline imposed on the refugees to leave since the camp’s closure on October 31.