More than 100 refugee advocates and protesters have left the federal immigration department offices in Melbourne after occupying its office space, foyer and stairwells.

Chanting “Bring them here” and “We can be better than this”, the protesters refused police instructions to leave the building in Lonsdale Street on Thursday evening.

Police formed a guard preventing more people from getting into the building, while protesters rallied outside the building with megaphones and banners.

The demonstrators, who began their protest at 4pm, eventually left in the early evening though some continued their rally outside.

“I feel like the level of violence occurring in offshore camps is at a point where civil disobedience is the only way,” one of the protesters, Anastasia Kanjere, said.



“We want to show people the feeling is here for mass civil disobedience. Ordinary people are ready to disrupt in ways they haven’t before, and there will be more to come.”

An organiser of the protest, Emma Kefford, said: “The goal was to disrupt to some degree because we feel rallies haven’t been getting the message across, and the degree of despair and misery occurring offshore requires a heightened response that intervenes a bit more,” she said.

“We may be prepared to negotiate with police a little later on, but the plan is to stay indefinitely.”

The protesters were angry that two asylum seekers were recently driven to self-immolation on Nauru, while an asylum seeker who was raped in Nauru was sent to Papua New Guinea for an abortion that a federal court last week found would have been safe and illegal.

Earlier this month 23-year-old Iranian Omid Masoumali died after setting himself on fire in protest at his ongoing detention on Nauru. Another asylum seeker from Somalia, whose age is between 19 and 21, is in hospital in Brisbane after also setting herself on fire on Nauru.

Last week, the federal court found that the minister for immigration, Peter Dutton, exposed an asylum seeker who became pregnant after being raped on Nauru to serious medical and legal risks by flying her to Papua New Guinea for an abortion. Papua New Guinea did not have the medical equipment or staff with the expertise requires to cater to her serious neurological, physiological and psychological conditions. This week, Dutton said he would not appeal the ruling.

A Victoria police spokeswoman told Guardian Australia that by Thursday evening no protesters remained in the building.

“There have been no made arrests at this time,” she said.