Asylum-seekers held in the Australian-run immigration detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have only two resettlement choices: settle in PNG, or return to their country of origin, Australia’s Immigration Minister said yesterday.
“There is no third-country option available for people out of Manus at this point in time. That’s the reality that we deal with,” Australia’s Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, told local ABC radio.
The future of the 854 asylum-seekers who are currently being held in the centre is uncertain after Papua New Guinea and Australia agreed on Wednesday to close down the detention centre after PNG’s Supreme Court deemed it “illegal” in April.
Dutton said that since the centre had opened, less than 20 people had chosen to re-settle in Papua New Guinea, while hundreds of others had returned to their home countries.
Australia intercepts all migrants travelling to the country by sea and either turns their boats back or processes their asylum claims offshore in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, where an estimated 1,300 refugees and asylum-seekers are currently held by Australia.
Accusations of widespread abuse and trauma have surfaced in recent months.
Last week, leaked internal reports from the detention centre on Nauru revealed widespread abuse and sexual assault.
Dutton said he was “not going to be defamed” by media “because we are doing everything within our power to provide support to people”.
“The trouble, frankly, with the approach of the Guardian and the ABC has been to trivialise the very serious issues by trying to promote the 2,100 reports as somehow all of those being serious when they’re not,” he said. “I take these issues very seriously and, like all Australians, I completely abhor all violence, particularly of a sexual nature, against any people, in particular women and children.”
Refugee advocates and political parties asked the government to bring the asylum-seekers from Papua New Guinea to Australia.
Opposition Labor party said on Wednesday that the government should have a third-party settlement option.
Western Australia premier, Colin Barnett, meanwhile said that his state would welcome asylum-seeker families who are in Nauru if the federal government changes its position and allows them to resettle in Australia, as long as they don’t pose a security or safety risk (see accompanying report).
The minister also blamed news organisations and refugee advocates in Australia of encouraging the refugees to stay in the detention centre in the hope that the federal government would change its mind.
“The very people they’re trying to help, unfortunately they’re trapping them in a situation which is not desirable,” Dutton said. “It was counter-productive for academics and people from the ABC and the Guardian to offer up free advice on how people should stay and not accept or take a different course of action.”