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PNG officials, wearing army fatigues, inside the closed detention centre on Manus
PNG officials, wearing army fatigues, inside the closed detention centre on Manus. Photograph: Reuters
PNG officials, wearing army fatigues, inside the closed detention centre on Manus. Photograph: Reuters

Manus detention centre cleared of all refugees and asylum seekers

This article is more than 6 years old

Up to 60 men left without a place to stay, sources say, because new accommodation is either not ready or overfull

The decommissioned Manus Island detention centre has been cleared of all refugees and asylum seekers, the Papua New Guinean police and the Australian government have said.

But up to 60 men have been left without a place to stay, because alternative accommodation is either not ready, or already overfull, official sources on the island have told the Guardian.

On the second day of Operation Helpim Friend, PNG mobile squad officers raided the detention centre using metal batons against refugees and asylum seekers and forcing them on to buses.

Mobile phone footage shot in the centre on Friday morning showed PNG officers threatening and hitting refugees as they dragged men out of the centre.

Look Australia , that's what you people doing with us by using PNG hands.
This isn't forcing? @PeterDutton_MP Look it's you who want to make violence, so u can blame us but we are peaceful, and will be peaceful until we get freedom in safe place.#ManusSOS#Saveus pic.twitter.com/yyGOIimjzR

— Walid Zazai (@ZazaiWalid) November 23, 2017

Further footage shows mobile squad officers throwing rocks at the fences behind which refugees are sheltering, in an apparent attempt to intimidate them. An officer yells at a refugee, “Turn the fucking camera off,” before a rock is thrown at him.

Manus prison camp yestetday about 11 Am pic.twitter.com/t64mGQfnng

— Behrouz Boochani (@BehrouzBoochani) November 24, 2017

Other pictures show immigration officials manhandling refugees out of the centre. Refugees reported being beaten with sticks, having their phones seized, medicines destroyed, and other property stolen.

This morning police attacked the prison camp and the refugees are saying that they beat them. The refugees are going to leave the prison camp. So many are in the buses and are on the way to the new camps. pic.twitter.com/j5t1fSYxdB

— Behrouz Boochani (@BehrouzBoochani) November 23, 2017

More than 300 refugees and asylum seekers – who had been living without running water, electricity, or regular food supplies for three weeks – have been moved to alternative accommodation at Lorengau township.

There were some minor injuries reported in the forced removal.

At a press conference in Brisbane, the Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said that as far as he knew three people were injured: one was dehydrated, one tripped and had grazings, and the third “has an ankle issue which I think relates to an insect bite”.

Asked about the footage, Dutton said he would “like to see [it]” but dismissed “claims made on social media” by arguing that “there are clips taken but a lot of this doesn’t add up to the facts on the ground”.

There were reported but unverified injuries sustained in the forced removal of asylum seekers on Manus Island

Two men who collapsed on Thursday, when police first entered the compound, were reported to be safe and recovering.

The effort to physically clear the camp began on Thursday with about 50 refugees and asylum seekers taken from the detention centre to other accommodation on Manus Island – most of which is not yet fully built, without running water, electricity or security fences.

Reports from Manus say there are not enough beds at the new accommodation blocks to house all of the refugees removed from the detention centre. The Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Adam told the Guardian dozens of men left at the East Lorengau centre had no place to stay, and nowhere else they could go.

The Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani said busloads of refugees were left outside the East Lorengau centre and told there was no room for them.

Some people who were brought to East Lorengau were left waiting outside more than 4hrs. They were told there was no room for them. The person supposed to help them left and did not come back for 4hrs pic.twitter.com/xf55jiN3SF

— Behrouz Boochani (@BehrouzBoochani) November 24, 2017

The detention centre, where most of the refugees and asylum seekers have been held for more than four years, was officially closed on 31 October.

The men who remained there resisted being moved because of a series of violent attacks against refugees in Lorengau and because of a lack of services, especially for health, in the new centres.

PNG police said the clearance of the detention centre had been completed without force and that nobody had been handcuffed.

Australia has paid to build the new accommodation centres – known as East Lorengau, West Lorengau and Hillside Haus – and remains legally responsible for the welfare of the men. Australian Border Force maintains a significant presence in PNG, and retains effective control of all offshore operations. The Australian government has earmarked between $150m and $250m to be spent on Manus over the next year.

Earlier, Dutton said the Australian government welcomed the clearance of the former detention centre. He said food, security and medical services were “operational and have been available since 31 October”.

“What is clear is that there has been an organised attempt to provoke trouble and disrupt the new facilities,” Dutton said in a statement.

“The Australian government has been advised that some equipment has been sabotaged at the alternative accommodation centres, including damage to back-up generators. Vandalism has also occurred to water infrastructure.”

The West Lorengau refugee centre is still being built despite assurances that it is habitable

Power lines to generators at Hillside Haus were cut, but this was done by PNG landowners unhappy at the imposition of the refugees’ accommodation block on their land.

Local landowners, some armed with machetes, have protested against the centres being built and threatened those inside, PNG government sources have said.

The Australian government’s claims that alternative accommodation units are ready and suitable for habitation have been consistently refuted by independent observers, including the UN.

On Manus last week, the Guardian witnessed construction on the unfinished sites. Videos and photos from within them have been published showing blocked toilets, bathrooms without running water and buildings still under construction.

An asylum seeker’s photo of work still going on at one of the new Lorengau accommodation centres

Refugees and asylum seekers have consistently claimed they are not safe in the new housing in Lorengau, citing frequent violent attacks and a lack of security.

Labor’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, said the government should immediately accept New Zealand’s standing offer to resettle 150 refugees from Australia’s offshore centres Nauru and Manus annually.

“This out-of-touch prime minister can no longer continue to shirk his responsibility; he must immediately negotiate third-country resettlement options for eligible refugees,” Neumann said.

Labor leader, Bill Shorten, released his response to a petition from 12 former Australians of the Year in which he called for resettlement in third countries “as soon as possible” and described Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to refuse New Zealand’s offer as “perplexing”.

The Greens immigration spokesman, senator Nick McKim, said: “The siege is over but the danger is not. The violence that Peter Dutton has inflicted on his prisoners is a stain on our national conscience.”

On the 10th anniversary of the Rudd government, Turnbull used the issue to attack Labor’s record, attacking Shorten for choosing Kristina Keneally as Labor’s candidate in the Bennelong by-election because she was “a strong advocate for bringing asylum seekers from Manus Island to Australia”.

“Kristina Keneally wants to send a signal to the people smugglers: come on down,” he told a press conference in Canberra.

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