The last asylum seekers yesterday abandoned a closed immigration camp on Papua New Guinea, ending a three-week standoff between police and hundreds of men who had been prepared to suffer squalid conditions without power or running water rather than move to other camps where they feared violence.
Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Chief Superintendent Dominic Kakas said police and immigration officials removed all 378 men from the male-only camp on Manus Island over two days and took them by bus to residences in the nearby town of Lorengau.
Refugee advocates said officials used force and destroyed asylum seekers’ belongings to make them leave Manus.
Video was released of officials in the camp wielding batons.
Water, power and food supplies ended when the Manus camp ended officially closed on Oct. 31, based on a Papua New Guinean Supreme Court ruling last year that Australia’s policy of housing asylum seekers there was unconstitutional.
However, asylum seekers fear for their safety in Lorengau because of threats from local residents.
Before confirmation that Manus Island had been emptied, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull welcomed news that asylum seekers were leaving.
“I’m please to say in terms of Manus, that the reports we have are that busloads of the people at Manus are leaving, they’re complying with the lawful directions of the PNG [Papua New Guinean] authorities and moving to the alternative facilities available to them and that’s as they should,” Turnbull told reporters.
“That is precisely what you should do, if you’re in a foreign country. You should comply with the laws of that other country,” he added.
Activist group GetUp rights campaigner Shen Narayanasamy said in a statement: “I awoke this morning to frantic phone calls from refugees on Manus screaming: ‘Help, help, they are killing us.’ It is astounding that refugees being beaten and dragged out to buses has the support of the Australian government.”
Papua New Guinean police maintained that no force was used.
Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton accused refugee advocates of making “inaccurate and exaggerated claims of violence and injuries on Manus,” without providing evidence.
Dutton also accused asylum seekers of sabotaging backup generators and water infrastructure at the new accommodation provided by Australia in Lorengau.
“What is clear is that there has been an organized attempt to provoke trouble and disrupt the new facilities,” Dutton said in a statement.
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