After holding refugees in legal limbo on Manus Island in some cases for years, and using them as miserable human deterrents to others thinking of attempting the journey, Australia is apparently eager to wash its hands of them.
The PNG and Australian governments are reportedly in a panic to clear the Manus detention centre of asylum seekers ahead of a PNG Supreme Court case that could find the centre is illegal under that country’s constitution.
According to advocate Ian Rintoul, asylum seekers at the centre have been told that their claims for asylum will all be processed as soon as possible and that those found to be refugees will be offered resettlement in PNG.
If the detainees refuse that offer — as many already have, claiming they are not safe there in the wake of the violence that killed Reza Barati — they reportedly will be forcibly removed from the country. “The message was clear for us — whether you are a refugee or not, they want to clear the detention centre. But there is no safety in PNG,” one detainee told Rintoul.
As Crikey has argued before, the kind of arbitrary detention that has been happening on Manus and Nauru is not refugee processing. But fast-tracked processing and the threat of forced removal is not a solution to Australia’s mismanaged offshore detention scheme, either, and will likely cause more unrest and violence at the troubled centre, and more protracted and expensive legal challenges for the government.
For two and a half years, this government has had the opportunity to craft a genuine regional solution to the asylum seeker problem. As the review conducted by Angus Houston, Paris Aristotle and Michael L’Estrange in 2012 recommended, offshore detention and processing could only ever be a temporary measure while an effective regional solution was developed.
But the only regional solution pursued by this government has been a bribe to the corrupt Cambodian regime to take just four asylum seekers, now reduced to just two. Now, it alone must pay the price for its laziness and hostility to regional engagement — Australia’s human deterrents, being held on Manus Island, have suffered enough.
We’ve created this disgusting situation and yet our PM feels it’s within his remit to offer advice to Brussels on what they should be doing in relation to asylum seekers..
Maybe they’ll send them to East Timor?
With all the bugging devices Howard’s “Woodside government” (of which Turnbull was a member) have probably left lying around there, they wouldn’t be able to scratch themselves without someone in this MT government, or their agents, knowing?
I understand that New Guinea is the country of the world’s worst domestic violence. This attitude of violent behavior would of course carry over into the public arena. Why would anyone think that the asylum seekers would be safe there? Or is that an irrelevant consideration? They’d be out of sight and no longer our problem.
I concur, Crikey, our treatment of the desperate and destitute is appalling. They have nothing and yet according to the Libs, they’re a threat to the nation. What a load of bullshit. And surely it would have cost far less to just let them into our very wealthy country where they could have embarked on a new and happy life rather than rotting in a detention camp. It makes me ashamed to be an Australiian.
Labor should hang their heads in shame, too. They’re supposed to be the party for the people, for Christ’s sake!
There’s not a skerrick of compassion within most of the poltical class and I therefore discharge all my bodiily emissions in the general direction of both the major parties, some independents, and if the Greens sidle any closer to the Libs, they’ll cop.it as well.
The only answer is to bring them to Australia. Third country solutions are not going to work. Countries like Malaysia and Thailand already house large groups of refugees – much larger than the numbers that have tried to come to Australia by boat. And refugee settling countries like Europe and the US already accept far more refugees than Australia. They won’t have any sympathy for us and will tell us rightly to solve our own problems.