G4S employees broke down the centre’s perimeter fence to allow PNG locals in on night of rioting, witness tells the ABC

G4S guards on Manus Island allowed locals in the detention centre on the night of the riot, where they began attacking asylum seekers inside the compound, according to a witness account broadcast by the ABC.



Protests on Manus Island last week escalated into violence involving guards, local contractors and asylum seekers. One asylum seeker was killed during the disturbance and several were seriously injured. Morrison has been criticised after being forced to revise his account of where the events took place, conceding on Saturday night that most happened inside the perimeter of the centre.

Accounts began to emerge last week of locals entering the compound, which Morrison initially denied. An witness to the events, who is one of the locally employed G4S guards but spoke on condition of anonymity, said he saw other Papua New Guinea guards and locals entering the compound and attacking asylum seekers after the asylum seekers began swearing at people outside the compound.

“The police fired warning shots and that scared the clients and they went into their rooms, so that’s when the G4S went in. And when the G4S get into the camp, they belt, they fight with the clients and belt them very badly and same are wounded, blood run over their face,” the witness told the ABC’s 7:30 programme.

“They’re some locals. Because the locals came to see what’s happening. They’re on the road and see what’s happening, so when the fence, the gates just – the G4S guards just break down the fence. They told everybody to go in and stop them and hit them and fight them, so that’s when the locals get in.”

The witness said the local G4S guards asked the locals to enter the compound because they wanted “manpower to help them”. He also said the feared PNG mobile squad played a limited role in the disturbances.

As parliament resumed on Monday the minister faced a barrage of questions over his responses to last week’s unrest and who supplied him with the incorrect information.

“I advised in my previous answer on the afternoon of the Tuesday I received a further briefing. I reported on that afternoon there were conflicting reports. That’s what I said on Tuesday afternoon,” he said in response to a question from Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, about the time the minister was notified about the incorrect information.

The attorney general, George Brandis, defended the minister in an interview on Monday. “Mr Morrison has done a superb job in showing that what the Labor party said couldn’t be done can be done with good policy and a government with the will to implement that policy,” he said.