SYDNEY: Hundreds of asylum seekers refused to leave a detention centre in Papua New Guinea on Wednesday, even after power and water were cut and food supplies dwindled, in a stand-off that human rights groups warn could become a humanitarian crisis.
Australia and PNG are trying to close the Manus Island centre, one of two remote Pacific camps that Canberra uses to detain asylum seekers who arrive by boat. The camps have drawn widespread international condemnation.
The remote Manus island centre has been a key part of Australia’s disputed “Sovereign Borders” immigration policy under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores, detaining them instead in PNG and Nauru in the South Pacific.
Around 600 detainees on Manus island are defying the attempts to close the camp, saying they fear violent reprisals from the local community.
The men refused to board a bus to a transit centre on the island on Wednesday, three of the asylum-seekers said, frustrating Australia’s plans to dismantle part of its costly offshore detention programme.
“They took generators this morning and they cut the main pipes, there is no power in the whole centre and no water,” Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz said. “People are extremely anxious.”
The asylum seekers, warned that utilities would be cut, had begun to collect rainwater in bins. However, without running water, advocates fear a rapid decline in sanitary conditions of the camp.
The loss of power also threatens to dampen morale of the detainees, nearly all of whom are suffering from mental health issues, according to a United Nations report in 2015.
“Mobile phones are a lifeline for these men,” said Elaine Pearson, director of Human Rights Watch in Australia.
“They are completed isolated and they need phones to get real-time information about what is happening elsewhere on Manus, as well as to stay in touch with their families.” — Reuters
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