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| (SMH) |
There have been wildly divergent reports coming out of Manus Island in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, Ben Doherty in the Guardian reported that up to 500 detained asylum seekers had joined a hunger strike that began on Tuesday in one compound and quickly spread across the camp. Also yesterday, new Immigration Minister Peter Dutton – fresh from being voted the worst health minister in living memory by doctors – denied that anybody was engaging in a hunger strike.
But Doherty's report detailed accounts of sewn lips, broken water pumps and a local stop-work strike among PNG guards. The hunger strike claims also appear to be corroborated by (unnamed) Manus-based immigration department officials, by photos obtained by the Guardian and by Fairfax and ABC reports yesterday evening. One Egyptian man has reportedly swallowed a razor blade. According to Doherty's report, detainees – some of whom have been on the island for well over 12 months – are protesting at the prospect of their release into the local Manus community, most of which is strongly opposed to the asylum seekers living there. Many detainees are asking to be handed over to the United Nations.
(The Monthly)
Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the Australian government for its policy of processing asylum seekers offshore. BBC reported that the government has denied reports of a hunger strike. The country sends refugees who arrive by boat to offshore processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
In February 2013, the Manus Island detention centre was the site of the deadly riots when PNG locals stormed the facility and clashed with detainees. One asylum seeker died in the riots, while 70 people were wounded or injured.
The recent protest began at the Mike compound when detainees who went on hunger strike refused to return to their living quarters. At least 10 asylum seekers had decided to sew their lips as a sign of protest.
According to ABC, an Egyptian-Christian man swallowed several razor blades. Campaign group Refugee Action Coalition provided an audio recording of an asylum seeker revealing that 220 people had gone on hunger strike. The person said more asylum seekers are expected to join them.
The asylum seeker said the detainees went on hunger strike to push Australia to turn them over to the United Nations if they will not be allowed to settle in Australia. In the recording, the asylum seeker went on to say that the detainees in Manus Island believe they are in a "bad situation." The detainees have declared they will remain outside until their demands are met, The Guardian reported.
(ibtimes.com)
The escalating protest was first acknowledged by the government on Thursday afternoon after Immigration Minister Peter Dutton previously denied it existed. It is believed to involve more than half of the 1035 detainees in the centre, asylum seekers and refugee advocates have told Fairfax Media.
Refugee advocates also estimate that more than 14 people have sewn their lips together.
A handwritten letter from asylum seekers at the centre's Foxtrot compound says: "We will die in PNG if Australian government resettle us in PNG. "Take us to Australia please or we will die here. "Please hear us Mr Peter Dutton. We know you are different, not cruel."
In a separate letter from the Mike compound, the asylum seekers write: "Frustrated refugees are tired of being mistreated and not heard after 18 months in inhumanly [sic] detention decided to act for the last time.
"This time but, all strikers prepared themselves for death. Desperate refugees and asylum seekers stopped eating and drinking and gathered under the open shelter in Mike compound from [Tuesday]."
(SMH)
In 2014 Australia stopped 441 asylum seekers in 10 vessels, the UN says, forcing them back to the countries they last departed.
The government regards these figures as evidence its policies are working. Thanks to boat turnbacks, offshore processing and regional resettlement, the argument goes, boats are no longer able to reach Australia. The people smugglers no longer have a product to sell: the “sugar is off the table”.
But that view fails to look over the horizon. It ignores – because Australia knows they are there – all the unseaworthy boats, and their desperate passengers, still looking for a safe port to land or dying in the seas to our north.
Even allowing (almost certainly over-generously) that several times that figure of 441 were deterred from trying to come to Australia, this country’s boat arrivals remain a tiny fraction of the world’s figure.
The number of people in our region still boarding boats bound for somewhere else is demonstration of the irrelevancy of the “stopping the boats” shibboleth. It is not a statement of policy, it is a tool of political rhetoric.
“Have the boats stopped reaching Australia?” is the wrong question to ask. A better question by which to judge the success of Australia’s asylum policies is this: are more people safer? Or fewer?
(Guardian)
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