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Weekly Refugee Posting
Mar. 9th, 2014 08:40 pmThe Sydney Biennale will no longer be sponsored by Transfield, who are providing security for detention centres including Manus Island and Nauru, due to a boycott by artists.
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The PNG and Australians goverments have announced that information about the fatal violence at the Manus Island detention facility will now only be released at monthly media briefings. (They wish.)
An unnamed Australia G4S employee has contradicted the PNG police report on the attack on the detainees, stating that police did nothing to stop the violence and some even joined in. According to the employee, the violence was primarily perpetrated by PNG G4S employees and local contract staff, armed with machetes and improvised weapons. "Once they knocked people to the ground, they were stomping on their heads with their boots." (Both Australian and local staff were also trying to protect detainees and get them to medical attention; as Steve Kilburn pointed out, the shield of "confidentiality" means we're not hearing these stories of heroism either.)
Staff at the Manus detention centre have been given a two-page guide on answering terrified detainees' questions about their safety. Problems at the detention centre are not new. (There was a fight between a caterer and a detainee the week before the fatal violence.) Between March and July last year, there were at least 110 incidents recorded at the centre, including self-harm, suicide attempts (including one by a minor), and assaults (including a guard kicking an asylum seeker in the groin and punching him in the head). This was before the election, when there were only about 300 detainees; there are now about 1300. If there were on average 2-3 incidents per day then, there must be something like 8-12 incidents a day now. From this perspective, recent events represent a spike in the violence being done to the detainees, not a sudden outbreak. Former G4S OHS officer Rod St George, who last year blew the whistle on sexual abuse and other violence at the centre, writes that: "The key problem was the Department of Immigration, which refused to consider professional advice concerning the protection of the inmates."
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for Australia to review its arrangement with Papua New Guinea. PNG's Catholic Bishops Conference has called for the Manus Island detention centre to be closed. Surprisingly, Iran plans to discuss the rights of its citizens on Manus with the Indonesian government. Manus Island itself declines to resettle the asylum seekers.
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On Nauru, charges against 24 asylum seekers have been dropped.
The guvmint has, bizarrely, once again frozen refugee visas until the end of June this year.
Dozens of asylum seekers whose details were published on the Department of Immigration's Web site will be appealing in court against their deportation.
On Christmas Island, the Uniting Church has offered to provide housing for unaccompanied children to prevent their being sent to Nauru. The cost of staff accomodation and lower-security detention facilities for families has increased from $21.6 million to $32 million since last December, although the number of detainees has fallen from 2157 people to 1719.
__
The PNG and Australians goverments have announced that information about the fatal violence at the Manus Island detention facility will now only be released at monthly media briefings. (They wish.)
An unnamed Australia G4S employee has contradicted the PNG police report on the attack on the detainees, stating that police did nothing to stop the violence and some even joined in. According to the employee, the violence was primarily perpetrated by PNG G4S employees and local contract staff, armed with machetes and improvised weapons. "Once they knocked people to the ground, they were stomping on their heads with their boots." (Both Australian and local staff were also trying to protect detainees and get them to medical attention; as Steve Kilburn pointed out, the shield of "confidentiality" means we're not hearing these stories of heroism either.)
Staff at the Manus detention centre have been given a two-page guide on answering terrified detainees' questions about their safety. Problems at the detention centre are not new. (There was a fight between a caterer and a detainee the week before the fatal violence.) Between March and July last year, there were at least 110 incidents recorded at the centre, including self-harm, suicide attempts (including one by a minor), and assaults (including a guard kicking an asylum seeker in the groin and punching him in the head). This was before the election, when there were only about 300 detainees; there are now about 1300. If there were on average 2-3 incidents per day then, there must be something like 8-12 incidents a day now. From this perspective, recent events represent a spike in the violence being done to the detainees, not a sudden outbreak. Former G4S OHS officer Rod St George, who last year blew the whistle on sexual abuse and other violence at the centre, writes that: "The key problem was the Department of Immigration, which refused to consider professional advice concerning the protection of the inmates."
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for Australia to review its arrangement with Papua New Guinea. PNG's Catholic Bishops Conference has called for the Manus Island detention centre to be closed. Surprisingly, Iran plans to discuss the rights of its citizens on Manus with the Indonesian government. Manus Island itself declines to resettle the asylum seekers.
__
On Nauru, charges against 24 asylum seekers have been dropped.
The guvmint has, bizarrely, once again frozen refugee visas until the end of June this year.
Dozens of asylum seekers whose details were published on the Department of Immigration's Web site will be appealing in court against their deportation.
On Christmas Island, the Uniting Church has offered to provide housing for unaccompanied children to prevent their being sent to Nauru. The cost of staff accomodation and lower-security detention facilities for families has increased from $21.6 million to $32 million since last December, although the number of detainees has fallen from 2157 people to 1719.
