Guide for refugees moved to Australian-run transit centre lists sights to see – and where to go for ‘fishing and snorkelling trips’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

“Welcome to Lorengau,” the brochure says, beneath a cliched picture of a sunset idyll, palm trees curving over the sands of a deserted tropical beach.

But no holiday brochure is this: it is the Lorengau guide written by Transfield (now Broadspectrum) for refugees moved from immigration detention to the East Lorengau refugee transit centre, “your temporary accommodation” according to the brochure, though some men have been there for more than a year.

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The brochure is designed to help refugees negotiate life outside detention. The men held in the East Lorengau centre are allowed to go outside during the day but their movements are restricted, and they cannot leave Manus Island.

Papua New Guinean and Australian government officials have announced that the closure of the Manus Island detention centre is to begin this month. Demolition of the first compounds will begin on 28 May and all refugees and asylum seekers will be removed by 31 October.

The East Lorengau refugee transit centre has the capacity to house 280 men. There are more than 800 now held in the detention centre. Refugees unable to stay at the transit centre will be housed elsewhere in PNG, an immigration official said this week.

The holiday-style brochure details sights to see in Manus Island’s main town – the government offices, temporary market, Catholic church, courthouse, police station and pharmacy. It explains where phone cards and credit can be bought, where “fishing and snorkelling trips” can be organised, and where “you will be able to buy fresh local produce at a low price”.

The brochure has a map of Lorengau township and of Papua New Guinea, as well as a guide listing basic phrases in Tok Pisin.

Further internal documents from the Manus Island detention centre show security staff planning to take refugees and asylum seekers on swimming excursions, noting it would prepare them for resettlement in Papua New Guinea – “which is not a landlocked country”.

But early swimming trips had to be cancelled after refugees swam out from the beach and refused to come back.



Many refugees were going swimming anyway, having found a spot where the wire fence was sagging. The fence has since been upgraded to a three-metre steel perimeter.

In August 2016 a 34-year-old Pakistani refugee, identified only as Kamil, drowned at a waterfall near Lorengau which was a popular swimming spot for refugees.

