Papua New Guinean police yesterday raided a shuttered Australian detention camp, removing dozens of refugees in an effort to end a standoff that has drawn global attention to Canberra’s tough asylum seeker policies.
Hundreds of men sent to the remote camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have refused to leave the site for new centers since Australia closed it on Oct. 31.
Over the past three weeks only about 200 out of approximately 600 men held in Manus have agreed to leave voluntarily for three nearby transition centers, with the others insisting they should be resettled in third countries.
Police moved in and took 50 men to alternative camps, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Commissioner Gari Baki said.
“We are doing the best we can and the refugees cannot continue to be stubborn and defiant,” Baki said in a statement. “The fact is that we are not moving them into the jungle. They are being relocated to two centres where there is water, electricity, food and medical services.”
Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton indicated that the police operation would continue, saying: “there is a lot of work that is ongoing.”
“A number of people ... have been moved and we would expect the number, which up until this morning had been about 370 people within that center, would drop obviously well below that now,” he told Sky News.
He added that a “small number” of men were arrested during yesterday’s action, including Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been acting as a spokesman for the detainees.
Boochani was later released.
Baki said Boochani was neither arrested nor charged, but moved to one of the transition centers.
Detainees had earlier tweeted and posted photographs and videos on social media of Papua New Guinean authorities sweeping through the camp, saying that police had pulled belongings from rooms and shouted at them to get into buses.
Boochani said on Twitter that police had destroyed their shelters and water tanks, adding that the refugees were on “high alert” and “under attack.”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday reaffirmed his government’s stance that none of the refugees, who were sent to the camp for trying to reach Australia by boat, would be brought to his country.
The men are barred from resettling in Australia, and Turnbull said their actions were meant to push Canberra into changing its mind.
“They think this is some way they can pressure the Australian government to let them come to Australia. Well, we will not be pressured,” he told reporters in Canberra. “The people on Manus should go to the alternative places of safety with all of the facilities they need.”
Amnesty International yesterday said there were “risks of serious injury if the authorities use force,” and called for the refugees to be transported to Australia.
The Australian government has tried to resettle the refugees in third countries, including the US, with little success.
Just 54 refugees have been accepted by Washington, with 24 flown to the US in September.
Despite widespread criticism, Canberra has defended its offshore processing policy as stopping deaths at sea after a spate of drownings.
The camps’ conditions have been slammed by the UN and human rights groups amid reports of widespread abuse, self-harm and mental health problems.
Amnesty said the refugees’ safety fears were also “well-founded,” adding that some had previously been “attacked and seriously injured” by locals “who have made clear they do not want the men on Manus.”
The Australian Medical Association has called on Canberra to allow doctors to help the refugees, warning there was a “worsening and more dangerous situation emerging on Manus.”
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