Catholic priest Father Clement Taulam and retired army major Michael Kuweh are defying both the PNG and Australian governments

'I cannot leave my neighbour hungry': support for refugees from priest and major on Manus

The major and the father seek salvation for the refugees of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

Two Manusian men – Catholic priest Father Clement Taulam and retired army major Michael Kuweh – are defying the PNG and Australian governments in calling for assistance for the refugees and asylum seekers on Manus, and for a peaceable solution to the standoff inside the condemned Australian-run detention centre.

Speaking at his Papitalai parish church on Los Negros Island, across a small bay from the detention centre, Taulam said the enforced shutdown of the centre – in which 380 men remain – had left people vulnerable and suffering.

Over years of pastoral care, he has built up friendships with many of those in the centre, he told the Guardian and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

“Now when they say they have no food, no water, no lights, they are deprived physically but they are saying too, that the physical is also spiritual for them. They are deprived of faith. They are suffering.”

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Taulam said no government seemed willing to take care of the men who remain in the centre.

“Australia seems to be saying, ‘Papua New Guinea, this is your responsibility’. And Papua New Guinea is saying to Australia, ‘Do your work, clean up your mess.’ And while this is going on, these people are suffering.”

“I’ve been talking with them, going to see them. A lot of them want to go to Australia, because that was their initial intention, but it looks like Australia doesn’t want them and that’s why they put them out here to process them to other countries. We really don’t know what the outcome will be. Because right now those people are in a situation where they are really hard up and they are suffering.”

Kuweh spent decades in the PNG military, rising from an enlisted rank to become a senior officer. He trained and served alongside Australian troops for years.

He said Manusians were famously hospitable and had welcomed West Papuan refugees fleeing political violence in the 1960s. But he said Manusians were being stopped from providing food, water and medical assistance to the refugees and asylum seekers inside the detention centre.

“Five years is a gruelling experience for many, and it doesn’t sit well for us, because … we are people of hospitality and the current situation is [that] the authorities denied us to give them [help]: ‘You can’t do that.’ Well, you can’t stop a Manusian to deliver anything.

“I cannot leave my neighbour hungry. And leaving [people] without basic needs is out of the ordinary. Whose policy is that? Inhuman, totally inhuman.”

Kuweh said Manus’s reputation had been damaged internationally by media coverage of the abuses, violence and privation over nearly five years of the detention centre’s operation.

“We are being sunk,” he said. “Our name is being painted with all kinds of connotations. It is not good.”

The situation inside the Manus Island detention centre, three weeks after it was formally shuttered, grows increasingly dire.

Water is running low and the makeshift wells dug by the men inside have been deliberately befouled by PNG immigration in an attempt to coerce the men into leaving. There is a meagre and dwindling supply of food and precious little medicine.

The fraught underground supply chain of essentials coming from Manusians outside anxious to help is ad hoc and vulnerable.

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Kon Karapanagiotidis from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said he was inspired to meet the father and the major and “to see men of such decency and integrity” taking action to ensure the men on Manus were not forgotten.

“The story of the retired major and father in of all the suffering and injustice we witnessed on Manus shows us the power of people’s every day humanity and decency,” he said. “These men highlight an important story that has been missed by many.”

But, Karapanagiotidis said, the responsibility for assisting should not fall to Manusian citizens.

“The villains are not the local people of PNG,” he said. “Many feel as much unease, disgust and distress as to what has been done to the refugees and people seeking asylum on Manus as we do. The fault lies with the Australian government.”

The crux of the standoff between the refugees and asylum seekers who remain in the detention centre and the authorities who want them gone is the safety of refugees moved to the Manus community, and their opportunities for a peaceable and productive future.



Fraught relations between Manusians and the transplanted refugee and asylum seeker community have marred settlement attempts. Those inside the centre say they cannot be safe in Lorengau.

Manus Island is a small, close-knit and familial community. Almost everybody in the province is connected by the tight bonds of wantok, the tribal ties and obligations that reach across the island.

Manusians proudly boast of their island’s reputation as the friendliest of PNG’s provinces. The Christian values of charity and hospitality to strangers run deep here and are proudly proclaimed.

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And many Manusians are empathetic towards the refugees’ situation and have made significant efforts – often at great risk to themselves – to assist the men inside the centre and those seeking to make a life outside.

But there is a significant minority that resents the imposition of the new population, which is exclusively young men. Tensions, present since the centre’s reopening in 2013, have been growing with the steady movement of refugees to the East Lorengau accommodation close to the township.

There have been an increasing number of violent incidents between the local and refugee populations. Refugees have been attacked with machetes and iron bars, others report having been threatened, beaten and robbed numerous times.

There is, too, tension over relations between refugees and Manusian women. Several babies have been born from these relationships, which have – in some circumstances – proven controversial in the conservative Christian community.

One asylum seeker was accused of sexual offences against an underage girl. He was charged but denied the allegations. He died before the offences came to court.

Compounding social issues, there is little physical space for refugees to go.

Ninety-seven per cent of land in PNG is held customarily by family groups and is in many cases their sole source of income and food. Refugees sent to live in Lorengau find themselves forced to squat on someone else’s property and that owner is often resentful of their presence.

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Other issues grate too: the refugees are seen, by some, as receiving favourable treatment. They are being housed, sometimes with air-conditioning, and given allowances for food and medical treatment, benefits not afforded to Manusians.

No one, not the Australian, PNG, or Manusian governments, is claiming that Manus Island represents a durable and safe solution for the men held on the island.

Taulam said the concerns over safety were real, though the hostility towards refugees did not represent the majority of Manusians.

“I have spoken to a few refugees who have gone to Lorengau and we do have some young people on the street who snatch their phones and things like that,” he said. “I think that at times some of them have been beaten. And so they feel that way that Lorengau is not safe for them because those things can happen. It happens in Papua New Guinea, it can happen to anyone.

“Sometimes they say that Manus is hell. And we feel bad about that, because Manus is a good place and the people here are good.”