About 600 men have barricaded themselves inside the
camp on remote Manus island in Papua New Guinea, defying efforts by
Australia and PNG to shut it. Food, running water and medical services
were cut off by Australia four days ago.
Australian
authorities want the men moved to a transit center elsewhere on the
island at the start of a process the asylum seekers fear will result in
them being resettled in PNG or another developing nation.
The men also fear violent reprisals from the local community.
“These
people have committed no crime other than to do what every single one
of us would do if we thought our lives, or our family’s lives, were at
risk,” Federal Greens lawmaker Adam Bandt told the crowd in Melbourne,
Australia’s second-largest city.
Another smaller protest was staged in Sydney.
The Manus island center, and one on the tiny
Pacific island of Nauru, have been key parts of Australia’s disputed
“Sovereign Borders” immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow
asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores.
Australia’s
offshore detention policies have been heavily criticized by the United
Nations and human rights groups but are backed the center-right
government and the Labor opposition.
U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news
conference in Geneva on Friday about the “unfolding humanitarian
emergency” in the Manus island center, where asylum seekers have been
reported digging wells to try to find water.
The
Australian government has not responded to Colville’s comments. It
frequently does not comment on issues concerning the offshore centers,
citing operational reasons.
The relocation of the men
is designed as a temporary measure, allowing the United States time to
complete vetting of asylum seekers as part of a refugee swap deal,
agreed on last year, under which Australia will accept refugees from
Central America. Labor leader Bill Shorten has called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to consider New Zealand’s offer to take 150 refugees from the camps on Manus and Nauru.
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