Human rights officials say Malcolm Turnbull must immediately outline a plan for those imprisoned on Manus Island and Nauru

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The executive order of the US president, Donald Trump, slashing the country’s refugee intake, appears set to kill off Australia’s nascent deal to resettle refugees there from its offshore detention camps.

Trump signed the executive order to drastically limit the US’s intake of migrants from Muslim-majority countries on Saturday morning Australia-time.

The order suspends the granting of visas to people from Iraq, Syria or any other “country of concern” for 90 days. Other countries of concern are expected to be nominated as Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Syrians have been banned from entering the US as refugees indefinitely. All refugee intake into the US has been stopped for 120 days.

The order also caps the total number of refugees entering the US in 2017 to 50,000 – less than half the 2016 figure of 117,000.

The executive order will have global consequences. For decades, the US has been, by far, the largest “third-country” resettler of refugees in the world.

In November, the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the then US president Barack Obama brokered a deal for the US to resettle some of the refugees held on the Australian-run offshore detention centres of Manus Island in PNG, and Nauru.

About 2000 asylum seekers and refugees are held on the islands, and most have been there for more than three years. The camps have been blighted by deaths, systemic violence, sexual abuse – including of children, maltreatment, poor healthcare, and self-harm and suicide attempts.

Iranian refugees make up the largest group on Manus and Nauru. There are also significant Iraqi, Sudanese and Somali cohorts likely to be affected by the US order.

In the face of speculation over Trump’s promised executive order, the Australian government has insisted that the US resettlement deal would progress, regardless of its content, but there is growing concern, given the breadth and strength of the Trump decree, that the Australian deal will be scotched too.

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The 120-day suspension of all refugee resettlement to the US means the resettlement deal cannot progress for at least four months.

Officials from the US were on Manus as recently as last week, outlining the details of the proposed resettlement deal. The Resettlement Support Centre East Asia, an arm of the International Rescue Committee, has been contracted to oversee the resettlement.

The process was expected to involve several interviews, and take between six and 12 months.



On Manus Island, the Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochani said that refugees, already sceptical about the genuineness of the US deal, believed it was all but dead. “It is hard to believe that Manus and Nauru refugees will be resettled in the US. Do not forget his promises and his slogans were against migrants and refugees.

“I don’t trust the government and I think they know that Trump won’t accept us. It is only a political game for wasting time.”

Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque, a Rohingyan refugee on Manus, told the Guardian from the detention centre he was shocked that Trump’s order stated that Christian refugees would be given priority among people seeking protection. “No human should be judged based on their religion or the colour of their skin.

“It is becoming ever more impossible to believe that the deal to resettle the refugees from Manus Island to the US will ever go ahead.”

A Sudanese refugee on Manus, Abdul Aziz Muhamat, said the men held on Manus did not know whom to believe on the future of the Australia-US deal. “It’s very strange, we have really lost hope, we are devastated.”

Writing in the Guardian, the director of legal advocacy for the Human Rights Law Centre, Daniel Webb, said the executive order “clearly impacts many, if not most, of the men, women and children currently stuck on Nauru and Manus”.

“While there may possibly still be a painfully long and narrow road to the US for some, it’s now crystal clear that the US deal won’t ensure safety for all.

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“When prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the US deal, he was quite rightly acknowledging that he couldn’t just leave people languishing in limbo on Nauru and Manus forever. Having finally conceded that Nauru and Manus are dead ends, it is our government’s responsibility to urgently find a humane way forward.”

Matthew Phillips, the human rights campaign director with GetUp, said that taken at face value, the executive order ended all hope of a timely resettlement program with the US.

“In brokering the agreement, the Turnbull government acknowledged that the policy of offshore detention is untenable and that it could no longer detain men, women and children indefinitely and without trial in abusive conditions. Now the onus is on Malcolm Turnbull to immediately outline a plan to provide safety for all those unlawfully imprisoned on Manus Island and Nauru, starting with the urgent evacuation of the camps.”



Phillips said the policy of offshore detention was in “utter disarray”.



“The PNG supreme court has ruled the Manus detention centre illegal and the government has no company willing to run the camps after October this year. Now that the resettlement arrangement seems unlikely to work out, Malcolm Turnbull must outline a plan to provide safety for all.”



Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is due to speak to Trump on the phone over the weekend, sought to allay fears on Saturday.

“You will have seen the executive order that has been published today and we are very confident and satisfied that the arrangement, the existing arrangements will continue,” Turnbull told reporters in Port Lincoln.



The Guardian has sought comment from the office of the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, as well as the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

