Manus Island: dark chapter of Australian immigration poised to close

On Tuesday, one chapter of Australia’s controversial and much criticised immigration policy is due to come to an end, with the scheduled closure of the Manus Island detention centre.

Its closure threatens to be as fraught as its existence.

Since it was reopened in 2012 by the Gillard Labor government the facility has seen controversy after controversy, from the poor state of its basic infrastructure to allegations of torture and mismanagement, astonishing rates of trauma and mental illness, and six deaths including one murder.

Ultimately its existence was ruled illegal by PNG’s supreme court, but that sparked a crisis about what the Australian and PNG authorities would do with the more than 700 men – the vast majority of whom were refugees – who could not return home, who were banned from Australia, and not very welcome in PNG.

“We feel as if the Australian government will simply dust its hands of us and dump us here forever,” wrote Imran Mohammad, a Rohingya refugee, in the Saturday Paper.

“We will become the headache of Papua New Guinea, where we know we are not wanted. We will not even be allowed to leave Manus, to travel to the mainland. It feels as if we will be pushed beyond our limit to survive here.”

The handling of the detention centre’s closure has attracted as much concern and condemnation as any of the numerous incidents in the history of immigration detention on Manus Island.

Alongside a sister centre in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru, Manus’s multicompound facility – housed inside a PNG naval base – forms the bedrock of Australia’s offshore processing regime.

At the heart of the policy is a single goal – to get asylum seekers to stop traveling to Australia by boat. Thousands have died trying.

But as successive governments became so wedded to this outcome that a single arrival or resettlement would dash the entire policy as a failure, its implementation grew increasingly harsh.

In July 2013 then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, declared no man, woman, or child who sought asylum in Australia by boat would ever be allowed to settle in the country, regardless of whether they had family here.

By late 2017 it was proposed they should also be banned for life, even from returning as tourists after resettling in another country.

In between the government also felt compelled to deny family reunions and medical transfers, the latter policy implicated in at least one death when Hamid Kehazaei died in 2014 from a treatable bacterial infection which developed into septicaemia, after medical care was delayed.

Six months before Kehazei’s death 23-year-old Reza Barati was brutally murdered by centre employees in a deadly riot.

Four others have also died, including two reported suicides in recent months.

The deaths punctuated the interminable suffering reported by detainees: the high rates of mental illness, self harm, instances of physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and indefinite confinement.

In 2015 more than 500 men began a two-week hunger strike in protest against prolonged detention and conditions on the island. Others self-harmed and strikers who fell ill were forcibly removed from the centre.

Midway through 2015 leaked documents revealed widespread failings in the healthcare services provided by IHMS in detention centres, including Manus Island.

Around the same time a PNG woman employed by lead contractors Transfield alleged she was raped by Australian colleagues inside the centre. The alleged perpetrators were flown out of the country by Wilson Security – not the first or the last such incident in which contractors were accused of protecting employees from PNG justice.

On Good Friday this year tensions boiled over again and PNG navy officers – allegedly drunk and angered by an altercation with some refugees – attacked the centre, firing guns and injuring a number of people. Detainees and staff sheltered inside the centre or fled into nearby jungle.

In May documents revealed the Australian government and its contractors had engineered a year-long campaign to make conditions inside the detention centre more punitive in order to encourage refugees to leave, confirming suspicions of detainees and advocates.

In the latest of many scathing reports, Human Rights Watch last week detailed frequent and escalating attacks and violent robberies by armed locals, including three recent incidents that resulted in medical evacuations.

The United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights Law Centre and a number of other Australian and international groups have repeatedly condemned Australia’s immigration policies, including offshore processing. Other countries have also lined up to criticise at successive UN periodic reviews.

None of it led to change in Australia’s policy.

As allegations and revelations mounted over the years, contractors eventually bowed to public pressure and sought to extricate themselves.

Transfield, the primary contractor to the Australian government, first changed its name to Broadspectrum, before it was bought out by Spanish firm Ferrovial in April last year. Ferrovial quickly made it clear it had no interest remaining in the Australian immigration sphere and would not renew its contract. The Australian government responded by enacting a clause which allowed a unilateral extension of Ferrovial’s contract for a further five months.

That same month the PNG supreme court threw a large spanner in the works, declaring the centre and its detention of asylum seekers and refugees illegal under the country’s constitution. The PNG and Australian governments declared the centre would close, setting a date of 31 October. After then the PNG defence force will re-occupy the site.

In June a class action settled out of court and the Australian government agreed to pay $70m in compensation to 1,950 men for their illegal detention and treatment. The compensation – stopping the presentation of a six-month trial’s worth of evidence – came with an explicitly denial of liability by the government.

Four months out from the closure date, detainees were told to “consider their options” as basic services including water and electricity would be shut down around them. The plan forced detainees from compound to compound, eventually – authorities hoped – outside and into the community.

They were offered the chance to apply for transfer to Nauru. As few as two have taken it up.

The only option to give any hope to the refugees was the agreement struck between the Australian government and the Obama administration to resettle up to 1,200. Upon taking office the next president, Donald Trump, railed against the “dumb deal” but it somehow survived. Yet just 25 men have gone.

Detainees, advocates, and human rights organisations have long called for the closure of offshore detention centres on the grounds of human rights abuses and breaches of international law, but in the case of Manus Island they are now actively campaigning for the authorities to keep it open.

They still say the refugees and asylum seekers are Australia’s responsibility and must be brought here, but the plans to close the centre on Tuesday are endangering peoples lives and threaten a humanitarian crisis.

They say the situation around the Australian-run centre is too dangerous to resettle people in the Papua New Guinean community outside the compound. About 600 detainees are refusing to move citing fears for their safety. There are daily peaceful protests.

“It is a place that reminds the refugees of violent attacks,” wrote journalist and detainee, Behrouz Boochani, on Friday.

“They have memories of being confronted with knives, memories of theft, memories of threatening encounters. It is a place without safety, where just a year ago refugees experienced myriad forms of aggression, a place that symbolises violence against them.”

Human Rights Watch’s calls for Australian federal police to be sent to assist in keeping the peace drew no response.

On Thursday PNG authorities said extra officers from its own forces, as well as the notorious mobile squads, would be on hand. The safety of detainees, staff, and contractors “could not be taken for granted”, it said.

Fijian news reported on Friday that 42 Fijian security workers had been sent to Manus Island, contracted for a year.

Local Manusians have also protested, claiming they weren’t consulted about the sudden influx of strange men into their small community and culture, have seen far fewer benefits from hosting the centre than were originally promised, and cite their own safety fears, pointing to a number of allegations of violence perpetrated by detainees.

“We are powerless and hopeless,” wrote Mohammad. “We have no intention, nor the strength and ability to fight anyone. We have been made to endure indescribable and unspeakable hardships for more than four years.”

Observers say the situation is critical, and are preparing for the worst. Whatever happens after Tuesday, the mark left by the centre and Australia’s infamous immigration regime will remain.