Papua New Guinea cops storm refugee camp
Hundreds of detainees ordered to leave centre
SYDNEY: The authorities in Papua New Guinea confronted asylum seekers yesterday inside a controversial detention centre on Manus Island, ordering hundreds of detainees to leave and destroying their belongings in an attempt to end a standoff at the camp that has drawn international scrutiny to Australia’s offshore detention policy.
By early afternoon, dozens of the asylum seekers had been removed from the camp and placed on three minibuses, said refugee advocates who were at the scene.
“They drove past with their heads out the windows, and they cried, ‘Help us’,” said Tim Costello, chief advocate for World Vision Australia, a charity. “They looked sullen and disturbed and defeated.”
Abdul Aziz Muhamat, a Sudanese asylum seeker in the camp, said the men taken away had been targeted because they were separated from a larger group and were easier to remove. “The problem was, those men split up from the rest of us,” he said.
The Papua New Guinea authorities’ aggressive move, which Australia’s immigration minister confirmed was taking place, represented an escalation of the conflict over the Manus centre. It comes three weeks after Australia officially closed the camp Oct 31, cutting off electricity, food and water as hundreds of the detainees, all of whom are men, refused to leave.
Since 2013, Australia has paid neighbouring Papua New Guinea to shelter migrants who were intercepted at sea while trying to reach Australia. The country’s policy, which the government says is meant to deter human trafficking, is that no such migrant will ever be allowed to settle in Australia.
Security forces stormed the camp around 7am Wednesday and began tearing through the men’s shelters and makeshift water tanks, before announcing on a loudspeaker that the men had to leave for alternative facilities on the island, detainees said.
“They’ve destroyed everything: our belongings, our shelters, our rooms and beds,” said Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish asylum seeker and journalist in the centre. “They said, ‘You must leave this prison camp’.”
Mr Boochani said authorities were confiscating mobile phones after a number of refugees photographed and filmed the episode, making it available to international news outlets. “At this moment that I’m talking with you, I’m in the toilet,” said Mr Boochani, who has regularly posted Twitter messages and written articles from the camp. “If I go outside, they’ll take my phone. It’s possible that if I go out, they’ll arrest me. I’m only worried that I won’t be able to write and tweet.”
The asylum seekers’ defiance was partly an act of protest, but it was also motivated by complaints that alternative facilities were not ready. Many of the men have also said they feared they would be attacked or intimidated by local residents who have resisted Australia’s attempt to move them closer to the island’s largest city, Lorengau.
Yesterday, Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton, accused the detainees of ruining the detention centre and wasting Australian taxpayers’ money.
“I think it’s outrageous that people are still there,” he told 2GB radio.
He compared the situation to building a new house for tenants who then refuse to move in. “The Australian taxpayers have paid about $10 million for a new facility and we want people to move,” he said.
Advocates for the detainees have questioned Mr Dutton’s assessment, pointing to photographic evidence that the alternate facilities are not ready.
“I find it very hard to believe anything that the immigration minister is saying at this stage — that’s based on the fact that I was at the camp on Manus Island last week,” said Jana Favero, director of advocacy at the Asylum Seeker Resource Center. “The only thing that’s making these men live in these conditions is the destruction that’s been brought on them by authorities. I can understand why they’re staying: because they’re going to be moved from one prison to another.”
Mr Boochani said that the men were tired, and he demanded that the Australian government find a solution to the stalemate.
“We’ve been in this prison camp for more than four years,” he said. “We are refugees, and we’ve been recognized as refugees by international law. Let us go to a third country. We don’t want to go to Australia.”
Of the 843 asylum seekers still on Manus, nearly 200 have not had their claims for refugee status approved or have been rejected, including many of the camp’s leaders.
Just hours after Mr Boochani said he feared arrest, asylum seekers on the island claimed that he had been taken from the camp by the authorities. Mr Boochani is a prominent figure at the camp. His writing has appeared regularly in Australian media and has won multiple awards.