Australian government will be asked to make alternative arrangements after supreme court ruled detention regime was unconstitutional

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Manus Island immigration detention will close, and Australia must make new arrangements for the 850 asylum seeker and refugee men held there, the PNG prime minister, Peter O’Neill, has announced.

O’Neill’s announcement follows a ruling by the PNG supreme court on Tuesday that the detention of asylum seekers and refugees was illegal and unconstitutional, and it ordered the governments of Australia and PNG to immediately move to end the practise.

“Respecting this ruling, Papua New Guinea will immediately ask the Australian government to make alternative arrangements for the asylum seekers currently held at the regional processing centre,” O’Neill said.

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“As I stated recently at the at the Australian Press Club, we did not anticipate the asylum seekers to be kept as long as they have at the Manus centre.”

The Manus Island facility is one of two in Australia’s offshore immigration processing regime. Both it and the one on the Pacific Island nation of Nauru, have been hugely controversial and highly criticised by the international community and human rights organisations. The Australian government provides funding and aid to the governments of PNG and Nauru to operate the centres, which house refugees and asylum seekers who arrived in Australia, or surrounding waters, by boat.

The Nauru centre was the scene of a horrific act of self harm on Wednesday, as a young Iranian man set himself alight in front of UN representatives. There have been at least five suicide attempts on the island in the past 24 hours, and two women have been missing since Sunday, feared drowned.

O’Neill’s announcement puts responsibility for the men currently held on Manus on Australia, after the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, sought to distance his government from the supreme court decision, saying it was only binding on PNG.

“The government’s position is very clear, and that is we are not going to accept people who have sought to come to our country illegally by boat, they will not settle permanently in our country,” he said on Wednesday afternoon.

“The court decision is binding on the PNG government, but not on the Australian government, so we will work with the PNG government to look at the situation, to provide what assistance we can, but we are not going to allow people smugglers to get back into business.”

O’Neill’s announcement, just hours after Dutton’s press conference, suggests that response was not welcome.

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Late on Wednesday Dutton acknowledged the announcement, and thanked O’Neill for “PNG’s continued support for this effort”.

“As I have said, and as the Australian Government has consistently acted, we will work with our PNG partners to address the issues raised by the Supreme Court of PNG,” he said.



“It is also the case that the Government has not resiled from its position that people who have attempted to come illegally by boat to Australia and who are now in the Manus facility will not be settled in Australia.



We will continue discussions with the PNG Government to resolve these matters.”



More than 800 asylum seeker and refugee men are currently on Manus Island. In recent weeks the PNG government stopped processing refugee claims and began sorting people into compounds, to prepare those with positive determinations for resettlement and those with negative determinations for deportation.



A number of people deemed to be refugees and settled in the PNG community have sought to return to detention for safety and security. Other asylum seekers have refused to submit their claim in protest.

“For those that have been deemed to be legitimate refugees, we invite them to live in Papua New Guinea only of they want to be a part of our society and make a contribution to our community,” said O’Neill.

“It is clear that several of these refugees do not want to settle in Papua New Guinea and that is their decision.”

Inside the centre, detainees reported guarded celebrations as the court decision was read out, and news of the closure order filtered through the detention compounds.

Behrouz Bouchani, a Kurdish journalist who has lost 17 kilograms while in detention and battled serious health problems, said he felt like a child at a birthday party.

“We were in systematic torture but now we can see and feel freedom. The hardest days and the dark nightmare will finish soon. There are a lot of happy faces, people were scared to have a celebration but now they are happy. I am very happy.”

Some detainees hugged PNG immigration officers and other local staff, when the news was announced.

“We have seen three prime ministers and three immigration ministers during our journey in Australia but finally, PNG court give freedom to us.”

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Another refugee, Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque, was more guarded. He said detainees on Manus had been deceived by authorities too often to trust them fully.

“The mood is very strange because all the inmates are flipping between happiness and worry,” he said.

“Everyone is shouting, yelling and running around the compound. If they had wings they would fly without stopping.”

PNG will negotiate with Australia over a timeframe for closure of the centre, which O’Neill predicted would have a detrimental effect on the Manus economy. He said he would work with Australia to minimise damage to local businesses.

“A number of local businesses have invested to expand their operations to support the Manus centre, and their businesses will now suffer,” said O’Neill.

“These are many small and medium enterprises and their employees who will now be out of work. Our Government will work with Australia in order to transition these businesses and workers to new opportunities so that their communities do not suffer.”

Manus MP, Ron Knight said regardless of this ruling, the Australian and PNG governments had made promises to the Manus community in return for establishing the centre there, and were obliged to follow through.

“It’s not our fault this happened – we’ve been promised certain things still yet to be fulfilled,” he told Guardian Australia on Tuesday.

“If it has to be closed down it has to be closed down, but we still need our roads fixed.”

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Labor spokesman for immigration, Richard Marles, said offshore processing was the “single most important” policy decision made in immigration, and had “unquestionably saved lives”, but it was never supposed to be indefinite.

A solution “can’t wait for two or three months”, he said when asked what Labor would do if elected in July.

Marles did not outline how a Labor government will handle immigration, but instead attacked Dutton for not going straight to PNG.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the government had run out of options for offshore processing in PNG.



“This camp has killed two men, it has destroyed the lives of thousands of others and now it’s finally closed.The statement from the PNG prime minister is unequivocal.

“The camp will close, Manus Island is over, and Australia is responsible for what will happen to the people who are there.”