Vol. 81/No. 48 December 25, 2017
Australian, Papua New Guinea cops move
protesting refugees
The detainees, all men and mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Syria, had held a sit-in protest for over three weeks after the compound was ordered shut by the PNG government. After they refused to leave, all food, medical supplies, power and water were cut off. The detainees met daily, Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist detained for four years and a leader of the refugees’ sit-in, told the Saturday Paper. They shared food smuggled into them by supporters, including to their adopted stray dogs.
Thousands of protesters have mobilized across Australia in recent weeks, demanding “Bring them here!” There also was a protest supporting them by residents of Manus Island.
The refugees have been calling for Canberra to take responsibility for their welfare after years of incarceration. They said they feared for their safety if moved to another camp on PNG.
The PNG cops “kicked people’s legs, dragged and bashed us, swearing at us that this was not our country,” Abdul Aziz, a Sudanese refugee at the camp, told the Militant by phone Dec. 3. “The Australian Federal Police were standing behind, directing the operation from outside.”
The cops stole refugees’ personal belongings, smashed bedding and other furniture and destroyed food and water supplies.
PNG Police Commissioner Gari Baki claimed the eviction was done “peacefully and without the use of force.” Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said reports of violence were “exaggerated.” But photos on social media clearly show men with bruising and welts on their backs or arms from beatings by PNG cops.
“None of us went voluntarily,” Aziz said. All the detainees were forced onto buses for relocation to other sites.
The Australian rulers are determined to keep them confined indefinitely in PNG to try to force them to give up and return to their war-torn countries, or to resettle elsewhere.
Doctors from Australia and other countries who volunteered to examine and treat the refugees were denied access to them. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, “We will not be pressured to let [the refugees] come to Australia.”
Aziz said the new facilities they were forced into were not fully built; many had no electricity, toilets or other basic necessities. Up to 65 people had no housing at all, with some told to sleep “in classrooms.”
In 2001, Canberra sent commandos to intercept a cargo ship, the Tampa, with hundreds of refugees rescued at sea on board, to prevent it from docking on Australian shores. Offshore detention centers were set up with aid promised to the government of Papua New Guinea, a former Australian colony, for holding the refugees. As refugees continued to try to make the journey, Canberra made the same deal with the government of Nauru, a small Pacific island.
In April last year, the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled that the Manus confinement regime was unconstitutional. The judges ordered the PNG government to “take all steps necessary” to end the “illegal detention of the asylum-seekers.”
PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said the incarceration center “damaged” PNG’s reputation. The onus was on Australia he said, to resettle the men held there. Canberra, to the contrary, has always claimed the detainees are PNG’s responsibility.
After the PNG court decision, Canberra passed laws preventing the refugees from ever setting foot in Australia. Immigration Minister Dutton said this would end “false hopes” given to asylum-seekers by refugee rights supporters.
The Australian government has also resisted an offer by the new Labour government in New Zealand to take 150 of the men.
Instead, Canberra says the detainees must wait for an existing refugee-swap deal negotiated last year with former U.S. President Barack Obama, a move that would get them as far away as possible. Under the agreement, Washington is to take hundreds of Manus detainees in return for Canberra accepting some Central American asylum-seekers held in U.S. border detention centers.
In a January phone call with Turnbull, U.S. President Donald Trump denounced Obama’s deal, but said he would abide by it. Since then, Washington has begun slowly vetting refugees’ applications for asylum. So far, only 54 have been resettled in the U.S. “We’re not going to give up our protests until we get our freedom,” Aziz told the Militant.
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