PNG puts onus of refugees on Sydney
Australia has agreed to spend up to A$250m to house Manus camp residents after closure
Australia will not be allowed to walk away from the legal, financial and moral responsibility for nearly 800 men when it closes its asylum-seeker detention centre in Papua New Guinea (PNG) today, its immigration minister said.
Human rights advocates are warning of a looming humanitarian crisis when the Manus Island centre closes if the men are not properly resettled, with hundreds of the detainees refusing to leave the centre for fear of being targeted by locals.
PNG’s immigration minister, Petrus Thomas, said late on Sunday that Australia will remain responsible for the welfare of the men that have been detained in the Australianfunded centre for more than four years.
Australia refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores, detaining them in camps in PNG and Nauru in the South Pacific. The United Nations (UN) and rights groups have for years cited human rights abuses among detainees in the centres.
“It is PNG’s position that as long as there is one individual from this arrangement that remains in PNG, Australia will continue to provide financial and other support to PNG, to manage the persons transferred under the arrangement until the last person leaves or is independently resettled in PNG,” Thomas said in an emailed statement.
The agreement
Australia has already said it would spend up to A$250 million (Dh705 million) for housing the nearly 800 refugees and asylum seekers in PNG for the next 12 months after its controversial detention centre closes.
The US has agreed to take up to possibly 1,250 refugees from Australia’s two Pacific detention centres, but so far only 25 men from Manus have been resettled.
In exchange, Australia said it will resettle Central American refugees.