The situation at Australia’s offshore Manus Island refugee detention facility has gone from bad to downright dire in recent days as operators attempt to shut down the facility and transfer the residents to accommodations in Papua New Guinea. They’ve turned off power and water supplies as well food deliveries, leaving remaining residents to dig for water.
On Friday, the United Nations called on Australia to restore supplies and protection to the asylum seekers immediately. According to Reuters, U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters that the U.N. calls on “the Australian government … who interned the men in the first place to immediately provide protection, food, water and other basic services,” adding: “We have conveyed to the Australian government and to the local government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) as well that until the time the accommodation is ready, refugees should not be moved there.”
One of the detention center’s residents, Iranian refugee Behrouz Baloochani, has been speaking to the media and tweeting about the conditions there. On Friday, he tweeted out:
“We have become refugees for a second time inside this hell hole, abandoned and left to fend for ourselves as best we can.”
— Behrouz Boochani (@BehrouzBoochani) November 3, 2017
Another tweeted photos of men digging for water earlier this week:
Guys on Manus are digging well to find water.#Australia wake up.#Australia people are dying in your name.@PeterDutton_MP @TurnbullMalcolm you are killing refugees and the whole world knows this.@JuliaGillard @MrKRudd blood on your hands too #auspol #newspoll #LNP #ALP pic.twitter.com/2U37O05jtu
— Amir Taghinia (@TaghiniaAmir) November 1, 2017
As of now, keeping the men there until secure accommodations can be found for them on the island does not seem to be under consideration, with authorities on Manus saying they are prepared to deploy the navy to forcefully remove the refugees. The men say they fear for their safety if they leave the detention center, as horrible as it is, because they don’t feel their accommodations in a nearby town are either ready or secure and they fear being violently targeted by locals.
One refugee who had been moved to accommodations in the nearby town of Lorengau even walked 13.5 miles back to the detention center on Thursday morning, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which was unable to speak to the man to figure out what had prompted him to return.
Australia has an incredibly hardline refugee policy The country has paid human traffickers to turn boats away and housed asylum seekers for years in offshore detention facilities on Manus and Nauru islands, where treatment of the refugees has been repudiated by the United Nations, several human rights groups, and Australia’s own courts as inhumane, abusive and illegal.
Former PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has slammed the “indifference” of both PNG and Australian governments in comments he made to the Guardian. He accused both of “playing football” with the lives of refugees and accused Australia of hypocrisy in how it treats the refugees, often referred to as “boat people”:
To exploit the vulnerabilities of neighbours like PNG and Nauru is disgraceful enough but to treat human beings with complete apathy is ruthless and insensible. Descendants of many Australians who are opposed to boat people also arrived by boat before and after federation in Australia. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Former President Barack Obama agreed to allow up to 1,250 of the refugees from Manus and Nauru into the United States in a an agreement President Donald Trump tried to get out of. He ultimately relented, but the pace of vetting and processing of the refugees has been downright glacial (especially given that the Australian government already knows who these people are and has been watching them for roughly four years).
So far, only 54 people have been processed and have made their way to the United States. It remains unclear if any more will actually be accepted given that the deal does not require the United States to take anyone who doesn’t pass the vetting process. Trump, for his part, has made his feelings clear, calling the agreement to take the refugees “stupid” and “an embarrassment.” Despite being told by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the people being kept in the detention centers are not “bad people,” Trump has compared them to terrorists, telling Turnbull in a phone call, “I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad.”