An Australian journalist who was denied entry into Papua New Guinea (PNG) believes he has been blacklisted from the country because he reported on conditions at the Manus Island detention center.
Photojournalist Matthew Abbott was on Friday detained by immigration officials at Port Moresby airport after getting off a flight from Brisbane.
Abbott was attempting to apply for a tourist visa and planned to travel on to Manus Island to report on conditions at the now-decommissioned center, where about 600 men have been without power, water and basic services for five days.
Photo: AFP
He was acting as an independent freelancer and was not on commission from any publication.
“While I was waiting in line for a visa on arrival, I handed over my passport to the immigration officer,” Abbott said. “She looked confusedly at her screen and asked if I was the same Matthew Abbott that had been involved with publishing disruptive material from Manus Island.”
Abbott said he was told to get his bags and wait to speak to a senior official.
“It was clear that I was on a list and there was no chance I was getting into the country,” he said.
Abbott said he asked if he had been denied entry on the orders of the Australian government and the officials did not respond. He said they treated him with respect and courtesy.
“To be told you can’t even access the country on the orders of your own country is pretty disappointing,” he said. “I know some of the guys who are there. Someone needs to be there to be covering this.”
The “disruptive material” is believed to refer to an incident that occurred at the detention center in July, when Abbott photographed the aftermath of an attack on two Afghan refugees.
Officials at the camp attempted to delete the photographs from his camera, scanned his passport and warned him not to publish them.
“When it was clear last time that they could not get the photos back off me, they said to me: ‘If you publish these photographs you are never going to come back here,’” Abbott said. “There’s a total double standard being applied ... journalists that are doing positive work and non-critical work are being allowed in whereas people who are doing critical work are stopped.”
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Paul Murphy said denying independent journalists access to Manus Island was an affront to press freedom and accused the Australian government of trying to dictate the nature of the coverage on Manus.
“These things are being done in our name and as citizens we have a right to independent scrutiny of what’s happening there,” Murphy said.
The suggestion that Abbott had been blacklisted because his work was critical of the detention center regime was particularly concerning, he added.
“Any evidence of government control and intervention in determining who gets to report, what can be reported and when it’s reported is absolutely repugnant,” he said. “It’s not something you would expect to see in a liberal democracy.”
Other Australian journalists have managed to gain access to the center, including News Corp’s Rory Callinan and Brian Cassey.
A Department of Immigration and Border Protection spokesman said that entry to PNG was a matter for that nation’s authorities.
Meanwhile, Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani has reported that the navy and PNG police are stopping food from being delivered to the regional processing center.
He says they are telling the detainees that if they want food, they will need to relocate to the alternative accommodation centers.
Boochani said a boat driver who attempted to deliver food on Friday was arrested.
Detainees have resisted moving to the accommodation centers, one of which is reportedly incomplete, because of safety concerns.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing