Tension as food, water cut in Manus refugee camp

Islanders, asylum seekers fear clashes

TENSIONS were rising yesterday after food and water supplies were cut at the Australia-run refugee detention camp on Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Manus Island, where hundreds of asylum seekers are due to be moved to a local town.

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,” said Behrouz Boochani, a refugee at the Manus camp.

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 detention centre was set up by the Australian government to hold asylum-seekers trying to enter the country by boat, for offshore processing.

The practice has been criticised by the UN 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 commissioner Gari Baki said yesterday. A “small disgruntled faction among the refugees… is creating uncertainty”, he said.

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.

Daniel Webb, an advocate with the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre, said the situation on Manus was “like a powder keg”.

“Locals are angry at the Australian government. The refugees are frightened. The situation is a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.

“The men are terrified to leave the camp because of the threat of violence from the locals.

“But they are also scared to stay because of the possibility of being forcefully removed from the camp,” he said.

“It is extremely tense and dangerous times for refugees, and this comes after four and half years of fear and living in a limbo,” said Webb, who has visited Manus camps three times.

“They deserve safety and freedom, not to be bludgeoned from one camp to another.”

Human Rights Watch’s Australia director, Elaine Pearson, said forcibly moving people to Lorengau after police have acknowledged the tensions with locals would clearly “expose the refugees and asylum seekers to greater danger”.

“Australia needs to step in and immediately bring these people to safety, and Papua New Guinea should refuse to shut the main centre until Australia does so,” she said.

More than 2 000 refugees – mostly from Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh – have now been living in limbo for more than four years in Australia’s two offshore detention centres, the other one being on Nauru.

The living conditions in the camps, as well as reports of high rates of mental illness and incidents of self-harm among the asylum seekers, have been condemned by the UN, rights groups and an Australian parliamentary inquiry.