Papua New Guinea asks Australia for help resettling refugees from Manus Island
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Version 0 of 1. Papua New Guinea has again asked Australia for help resettling more than 500 refugees who have said they are not safe in the country and do not want to live there. After more than three years of “processing” at the Manus Island detention centre, just 24 refugee men have been resettled across PNG, its foreign affairs minister, Rimbink Pato, told the ABC. But more than 560 men who have been found to be refugees by PNG’s immigration authorities remain in detention. PNG’s immigration authority has ruled the men have a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their homeland and are legally owed protection. It is illegal under international law if a refugee is sent to any place “where his (or her) life or freedom would be threatened” – known as refoulement. Pato told the UN last week his country needed international help in resettling the refugees and said he would raise the issue of more help from Australia in a meeting with his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, in Canberra on Tuesday. “These 560 people do not want to resettle in PNG and that’s why I was … explaining to the membership of the UN … that there was a need for help in the settlement of the persons who did not want to settle in PNG,” he said. “If the world was able to help, then we are looking to the international community. And of course we would need Australia to help us.” The men on Manus Island have been told there is no third-country resettlement option for them – they must either resettle in PNG or return to their home country. Australia has consistently told asylum seekers and refugees that they will never be moved to Australia. Detainees inside the Manus Island detention say they are are unwilling to settle in PNG because they feel they will not be safe there. Kamran, an Afghan refugee who fled the Taliban in his homeland, was brutally assaulted with an iron bar by a gang of men in Manus’s main city of Lorengau in August. He said other refugee friends had been assaulted on Manus too and that they feared resettlement. “We are all very scared. After three years of this I am exhausted. I fled my country looking for safety. I still haven’t found it.” Some of the refugees already moved to cities like Lae have been assaulted, robbed and left homeless just days after leaving detention. Some have made their own way back to Manus and tried to break into detention, where they feel safer. Inside the Manus Island detention centre, refugees have told the Guardian that security staff are preparing to separate asylum seekers from refugees into separate compounds. Forcible deportations of those found not to be refugees will begin “within a month” according to island sources. Refugees say they believe they will be forced out into the PNG community – likely to islands other than Manus – within the next few weeks. |