THE PEOPLE LEFT ON MANUS HAVE COME TO THIS - HAS ANYONE HEARD ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS?

Inside the camp, the men were desperate but determined.

Sick. Hungry. Trapped. They wanted freedom.

This is Manus Island.

The New York Times sent journalists into a contested detention camp in Papua New Guinea to investigate Australia’s refugee policy, and the resistance rising against it.

By DAMIEN CAVE NOV. 18, 2017

The men packing the boat with rice, cigarettes and medicine had fled war and persecution in their home countries.

Now, at 1 a.m., off the coast of a remote island in Papua New Guinea, they were speeding back to the detention camp they hated.

Why, I asked, would they return to the prisonlike “refugee processing center” where they had been trapped for nearly five years?

“We have brothers to feed,” said Behnam Satah, 31, a Kurdish asylum seeker, as we cruised over moon-silvered waves on a hot November night. “We have brothers who need help.”

Secret supply runs maintain the camp’s solidarity.

Power, food and water were cut off weeks ago.

The asylum seekers have been ​trapped​ for years.

Some holdouts struggle with ​anxiety and ​depression.

More than 1,300 asylum seekers have been dumped on Manus Island since the end of 2012 as part of Australia’s contentious policy to keep migrants from reaching its shores. They were all but forgotten until last month when Australia’s attempt to shut down the center and move the men to facilities near the island’s main town of Lorengau hit resistance.

Hundreds of the men refused to leave.

Many said they were afraid to move closer to town, where some had been attacked and robbed by local residents. But it was more than that. With the attention of the world finally on them, the camp’s detainees had turned their prison into a protest, braving a lack of water, electricity and food to try to jog loose a little compassion from the world.

They had already suffered and understood danger. Fleeing more than a dozen countries, they had risked their lives with human traffickers on ramshackle boats leaving Indonesia. And ever since the compound started filling up in 2013, it has been plagued by illness, suicide and complaints of mistreatment.

But now, by staying there and sneaking in and out by boat, they were risking arrest in a desperate search for self-determination, and to intensify scrutiny of Australia’s migration policy and methods.

And that scrutiny has come.

Veteran United Nations officials said this month they had never seen a wealthy democracy go to such extremes to punish asylum seekers and push them away.

Papua New Guinea officials and local leaders, enraged at how the camp’s closure was handled, have demanded to know why Australia is not doing more to help the men.

Instead, Australia is cutting services — reducing caseworkers and no longer providing medication, officials said, even though approximately 8 in 10 of the men suffer from anxiety disorders, depression and other issues largely caused by detention, according to a 2016 independent study.

“It’s a very drastic reduction,” said Catherine Stubberfield, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency, who recently visited Manus.

Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection did not answer questions about the service cuts. In a statement, it said general health care was still available and “alternative accommodation sites” were “operational” and “suitable.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has also doubled down on Australia’s hard-line approach, arguing that offshore detention has been a successful deterrent against illegal trafficking.

But in Papua New Guinea, deterrence increasingly looks like an incentive for cruelty. Officials, Manus residents and outside experts all argue that Australia has a responsibility to those it placed here, to international law, and to its closest neighbor.

“They’ve put the burden on a former colony which does not have the resources for many of the things its own people want, like health care and a social safety net,” said Paige West, a Columbia University anthropologist who has done extensive fieldwork on Manus. “This is a problem created by Australia’s failure to comply with its human rights obligations.”

The camp is a half-hour boat ride from town.

Relations with refugees have been uneasy.

Jobs on Manus are scarce. Rents are rising.

Just south of the equator, the heat is relentless.

The detention center, a warren of barracks and tents, sprawls across a naval base used by American troops in 1944 during World War II. The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the camp was illegal, calling it a violation of “personal liberty.” The governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea agreed in April to close the site by Oct. 31.

But finding alternatives has been a struggle.

Some of the men at the camp — all of whom were caught at trying to reach Australia by boat — have been granted refugee status and are hoping for relocation to the United States, under a deal brokered by President Obama and initially opposed by President Trump.

But nearly 200 of the 843 men still stuck on Manus (women and children were sent to the island of Nauru) have not had their asylum claims fully processed, or their claims have been rejected, leaving them effectively stuck on the island.

For now, all of the detainees are expected to move to three smaller facilities, near Lorengau, a few miles from the camp.

Lorengau is not a big place. It is a close-knit rural town with a few thousand people, a single supermarket, a rusty playground and electricity that comes and goes.

The new detention facilities are set apart from main roads and are closely guarded — we were turned away when a photographer and I tried to visit. But detainees can come and go. And photos, taken by the men, show that none of the facilities were fully operational more than a week after the move was supposed to happen.

At one of the new facilities, West Lorengau Haus, the electricity and water had not been turned on when representatives of the United Nations refugee agency visited days after the main camp had officially closed.

“It’s still a construction site — you can’t just move refugees into that space,” said Ms. Stubberfield, the spokeswoman.

The two other sites also had problems: One had intermittent running water, and the other, the East Lorengau Transit Center, lacked caseworkers.

Kepo Pomat, who owns the land that facility occupies, said he had issued the authorities an ultimatum: If his company did not receive the caseworker employment contracts, he would kick the refugees off his property.

Part of the problem is that the governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea are at odds over who is responsible for the men. Australia says Papua New Guinea is in charge of providing for them. Papua New Guinea says it is willing to house the refugees, but it is Australia’s responsibility to pay for them and pursue ways for them to leave.

“We’ve been urging that the Australians keep up their responsibility,” said Duncan Joseph, a community leader and the island’s Red Cross representative. “The fact that they’ve withdrawn and drastically scaled back services doesn’t change that for us, morally and legally, they are responsible for these men.”

Many of the detainees who have moved to the new sites reported crowded dormitories and delays with getting food. Some did not receive the weekly stipend of $30 for medicine and incidentals they were promised upon arrival.

Mohyadin Omar, 27, a lawyer with a soft demeanor who fled Somalia in 2013, said the move to the transit center had made him consider returning to Mogadishu. He is a certified refugee who lost his entire family to war. He fears he will be killed back home, but he may go anyway.

“I’m tortured four years here,” he said. “I’m done.”

Behrouz Boochani writes about the camp’s struggle​s​.

But others suffer silently.

Morteza Arefifar recently tried to commit suicide.

Joinul Islam was attacked with a machete.

Back inside the main detention camp, conditions deteriorated quickly after the Australians officially left on Oct. 31, cutting off the electricity and water before departing.

In the equatorial heat, the men who were sick got sicker. Asthmatics needed inhalers. Diabetics needed insulin.

Mr. Satah, the leader of the supply operation, seemed relieved when our boat pushed ashore. The navy guards and police meant to keep everything out of the camp either did not see us or chose not to intervene. Mr. Satah, a fast-talking former English teacher, smiled he led a dozen men carrying food and medicine toward a container inside the compound.

“O.K. Brothers, thank you very much — love you, love you,” he said, echoing their expressions of appreciation.

Though it was after 2 a.m., many of the men were eager to guide me through the camp, where most had lived for more than four years, in many cases without ever leaving.

They showed off the well they had dug for water, and the protest signs they posted on Twitter using cracked cellphones, cherished like fine crystal.

Some of the men who stayed at the camp appeared mentally stronger than those who had relocated.

They made clear they want to be resettled in a third country, neither Australia nor Papua New Guinea. In the meantime, they were surviving. They were defying the authorities. Thanks in part to money from supportive Australians and local boat pilots risking arrest, they had cigarettes, a stash of booze, and a measure of what they have most craved: agency and autonomy.

“There are many things that brought us to the point where we’ve said we will never go,” Mr. Satah said when he was still in Lorengau gathering supplies. “But remember, we didn’t come here by choice.”

Behrouz Boochani, another Iranian Kurd who has become well-known for writing from the camp, put it more simply in a resistance manifesto: “All the conversations are driven by one thing, and one thing only, and that is freedom,” he wrote. “Only freedom.”

Why then have more of the men not tried to pursue a future in Papua New Guinea? After I spent time in Lorengau, it became clear: Even for those who have made a life in Manus, there are real challenges.

Mustafizah Rahman, 25, an asylum seeker from Bangladesh, married a local woman and opened a shop in a red shipping container near the main Lorengau market.

There, he said, he is pursuing his dream “to become a multimillionaire.”

The island’s residents consider him a model of integration. But Mr. Rahman, whose wife is eight months pregnant, remains stateless, he said, without formal residency in Papua New Guinea.

Lorengau has become increasingly crowded with climate change refugees who have moved there from more remote islands, and Mr. Rahman said he was barely getting by after paying for rising rent and food costs.

“Not everyone can do this,” Mr. Rahman said, between customers. “We’re really not accepted in this country. If they bring everyone to town, many people will die.”

Photos in camp point to the past.

Graffiti shows the pain of detention.

And the dead are memorialized.

Another challenge: missing family.

The fear of violence is shared by many of the asylum seekers, who have been targets of attacks in Manus and in other parts of Papua New Guinea, as they have been in other countries. A recent Human Rights Watch report documented a series of cellphones thefts and attacks, some involving machetes.

Kakau Karani, Lorengau’s acting mayor, said that the risks were exaggerated and that in fact, many residents had provided the men with food, lodging and work.

Around 10 children have been born to asylum seekers and local women, the mayor said, adding, “If we weren’t friendly, we would not be making babies here.”

Other residents worry that the men are preying on local women.

Ultimately, both the asylum seekers and the local residents are a mix of potential and risks.

Some of the detainees are resilient and have learned new languages. Others survive with sleeping pills or drink too much — as do some local men.

Australia says offshore detention has reduced trafficking and deaths at sea. Mr. Turnbull has rejected an offer from New Zealand to take 150 of the refugees, arguing it would encourage traffickers.

But for Manus, the effects are evolving and still being tallied. Six detainees have died here. A small number have reached Australia for medical treatment. Hundreds have left, after agreeing to deportation. And 54 refugees from Manus and Nauru have made it to the United States.

When might more follow?

Yassir Hussein, one of the camp’s leaders, said he often contemplated ideals like liberty and justice — and what they mean for migration’s winners and losers.

“We are happy for the lucky ones,” he said. “But why are they lucky? Why are we not lucky?”

Damien Cave is the Australia bureau chief for The New York Times. Sign up for his weekly newsletter and follow him on Twitter: @damiencave.
Produced by CRAIG ALLEN, DAVID FURST, RUSSELL GOLDMAN and ANDREW ROSSBACK

MANUS AND NAURU - THE SITUATION DETERIORATES BY THE MINUTE AND THE POLITICIANS' BEHAVIOURS ARE MORE AND MORE DISGUSTING!

The situation on Manus has become critical if not criminal, and at this stage there should be an outcry from Australian citizens demanding an end to this foul treatment of people who in the main have experienced nothing but trauma over the last several years since fleeing from those causing them untold grief and sorrow. 

The whole story really starts in 1992 when Paul Keating was Australian Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister of Australia after deposing Bob Hawke.

Keating decided that people coming to Australia seeking asylum should be locked up and screened before being allowed to be let out to mix with Australian citizens and their lives and cultures. 

The situation has gone steadily downhill since then, with the ALP's cruelty being continued by the Coalition and other small groups within the federal parliament carrying on the "great" tradition started by Keating so long ago, with the latest disaster from a country which thinks it is entitled to some UN recognition on its Human Rights organisation. 

Manus was officially closed by the Australian government on 1 NOVEMBER 2017 when electricity, water, food and other necessities of life were removed from 600 asylum seekers who have refused to move.

On 3 NOVEMBER 2017 the Papua New Guinea government, emulating its Australian masters, has refused to let church groups enter the camp with food, and a boatload from Australia carrying supplies has also been forbidden from landing.

It is difficult to comprehend the cruelty being inflicted on these people and reminds me of stories from South Africa and Europe during the Nazi and Stalinist and other regime disasters of much of the 20th century.

This could well be termed a genocide in the making, and in the end will be similar to what the world is doing to the Palestinians in their own country and what is being done by governments everywhere which have been trying to get rid of their indigenous communities by every means at their disposals.

MANUS AND NAURU - NOT ONLY AUSTRALIA'S CONCENTRATION CAMPS, BUT NOW THE DEATH CAMPS TOO!

There are too many politicians and journalists in Australia who have remained silent for too long.

Another death on Manus - and someone who was desperately in need of assistance and attention - and the responses from the politicians?

Silence all the way.

And the citizens of Australia?

A vague stirring.

Will it lead to a campaign to stop this criminal activity on the part of the government and its loyal opposition?

Probably not.

Where is the humanity, human rights, protections, assistance, and all the other issues which need immediate attention?

One can't even quote Alan Paton any more - no doubt the generations of today have not heard of the famous South African book "Cry the beloved country."

This is probably not exactly genocide, but it is not far removed from what genocide is and what it does.

Those of us who care are too old or worn out to be able to actively campaign as once we might have done, and we hoped later generations would fill the gap, but alas it has not happened.

People should be marching in the streets throughout the country and screaming from the roof tops till everybody is awakened to the criminal activities taking place in their names.

I despair, and at 90 I see no solutions in my lifetime.

MANUS AND NAURU - AUSTRALIA'S OFFSHORE CONCENTRATION CAMPS GOVERNMENT'S LATEST OUTRAGE COURTESY PETER DUTTON

It would appear that it is possible to reinvent the wheel.

Remember John Howard's and Peter Reith's Children Overboard when the Tampa ship rescued some asylum seekers offshore from Australia?

We have now had a similar sort of incident at Manus where Peter Dutton is accusing asylum seekers of paedophilia after a nasty incident involving Papua New Guinea soldiers and/or police who fired shots into the concentration camp because, according to Dutton, the camp inhabitants took a 5 year old boy into the prison.

We are waiting for evidence, for proof - to substantiate the story.

Is there no end to how low and despicable Australian politicians can sink?

Apparently not!

CONCENTRATION CAMPS - AUSTRALIA LEARNS FROM ITS BRITISH TEACHERS

Australia's apprenticeship on concentration camps ended some time ago, even before the establishment of the infamous pair Manus and Nauru.

Those on Christmas Island and on the Australian mainland were already emulating the best in the world - the British ones in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, the German ones during World War II, and, from 1948 onwards, the Israeli ones in Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the Palestinian West Bank which the zionists have always claimed as zionist homeland territory after falsifying history in the best traditions of colonial and occupying powers over the ages, not forgetting one of the other more infamous ones of the modern era such as the USA one called Guantanamo on occupied Cuban land.

One of the best ways of ridding oneself of unwanted refugees, asylum seekers, "foreigners" of various origins - is to lock them up in concentration camps and help them to die off while in imprisonment and then blame them themselves for their deaths.

Manus has been a particularly fruitful camp for asylum deaths in custody - people who have committed no crimes but who have fled from their countries of origin because of illegal wars perpetrated on their countries by such imperial powers as Australia, UK, USA, France and many others too numerous to mention - the African continent bears the brunt of so much these days.

The 20th century has seen endless crimes committed by countries spending untold amounts of money on arms and war equipment, and killing millions of innocent people on an ongoing basis - the Israeli government is a "good" example of this ongoing tragedy, and Australia has willingly joined its masters around the globe in these exercises in order to gain resources, territories, markets, and all the other spoils of war.

The one "spoils of war" issue that none of them wants is the influx of millions of refugees and asylum seekers from around the world, and what do we do? We lock them up and wait for them to die!

MANUS ISLAND, NAURU, AUSTRALIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND RELATIONSHIP TO DEATH CAMPS.

The Manus Island concentration camp in Papua New Guinea has now had its 4th death in custody.

The people in the concentration camps have not been tried in criminal courts or in any sort of tribunal, but life has been removed from them so that they will die tortured deaths from a variety of reasons.

The British have got a proud history of concentration camps, having developed them in South Africa between 1899 and 1902 in what is known in some history records as the Boer War.

The people locked up in them, men, women and children, died from all manner of causes such as Typhoid and other diseases, starvation, and brutal treatment at the hands of their jailers. The Afrikaans population of South African never got over their treatment at the hands of the victors of that war, and their bitterness persisted even after the end of official apartheid in 1994, when Nelson Mandela's ANC party became the government of South Africa.

On Nauru, where some people are not actually locked up in the concentration camps there, if they have limited freedom to walk around the country, the Nauruan population resent their presence and attack them and harass them and their so-called freedom becomes non-existent. There have been some gay people walking around who have been assaulted so badly that they have feared for their lives and are now petrified to walk around the island.

Compare the current Australian government with other concentration camp governments - Israel - think Gaza and the West Bank, UK, USA - think Guantanamo, and others too numerous to mention - and you end up with the appalling state of the Australian camps which are apparently worse than some of Australia's worst prisons.

Added to the total inhumanity of the situation is the fact that these concentration camps cost an absolute fortune to maintain and the government tells us that we have to tighten our belts - parliamentarians excepted. In order to rob the poor and pay the rich, organisations such as those who run the concentration camps, no doubt keep offshore accounts and don't pay taxes in Australia.

And, as ever, religions continue to live tax-free existences, costing the community billions to pay for what these organisations don't pay for, and what are these religions doing for the people in our concentration camps to make their lives easier - well of course - exactly nothing.

ASYLUM SEEKERS - WHAT IS MORE DISGRACEFUL THAN AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS' DISGUSTING POLICIES?'

Is there anything more disgraceful than what is going on in Australia at the moment - 8 November 2016 - than the responses of the federal politicians to some of the most unfortunate human beings on the planet?

Locked away in the concentration camps established by Australia in Nauru and Manus (Papua New Guinea), the asylum seekers have just been dealt another death blow by the Australian government which is in the process of passing a bill to deny entry to Australia - EVER - of these unfortunate people.

Those of us who live in Australia and are mortified by the shenanigans of our politicians are in a situation where all the protests we have been able to be part of for the last several years have found it all to be of no avail, and the situation deteriorates daily.

Why is there not an outcry by the people who live in this country - ALL - except the indigenous population - of whom are migrants and asylum seekers? Why are they not screaming at their politicians and demanding humanitarian treatment of human beings who are desperate for some safety and security in their lives for themselves and their children?

To continue Alan Paton's refrain - "Cry the Beloved Country" - but this is no longer a beloved country - its human rights abuses are horrific and relate to regimes we have known over the past 100 years and more.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS

What is it about Australian politicians - do they really think that 24 million people living in this country are dumb?

People understand torture and abuse when they see it - or even when they don't see it - although we are not supposed to believe the reports that manage to get through the smokescreens and other subterfuges that governments use to hide the human rights abuses they are perpetrating behind closed doors.

So we don't know what went on in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Auschwitz, Gulags and other equivalent horror hot spots such as Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestine?

Despite their best attempts information manages to get out into the public arena and is seen and read by thousands if not millions of people around the world.

Even today, the New York Times, one of the most conservative papers around, has an article condemning Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in Manus and Nauru.

The Nauru cowboys get a free run to further torture asylum seekers who are not locked up in their cages all the time by harassing them and assaulting them at every given opportunity.

The main problem is that the public has been so apathetic about what governments are doing in Australia that there hasn't been a massive outcry with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, getting on to the streets and demonstrating their objection to this police-state-like activity on the part of government and opposition alike.

There are solutions available, but some politicians are cruel and enjoy their sadistic cruelty and insist that they know best what they are doing and everybody else is wrong.

One has to continue to believe that this will come to an end one day, as usually this sort of regime ends - think apartheid South Africa - and with ongoing pressure apartheid Australia, apartheid Israel and a few other apartheid states will come to an end.

Maybe some of the perpetrators will end up in international criminal justice tribunals and be forced to admit to their atrocities.

ASYLUM SEEKERS IN NAURU AND MANUS, PALESTINIANS IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA - SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

Concentration Camps seem first to have entered the world stage when the British Government established concentration camps in South Africa between 1899 and 1902 when the Boer Republics were fighting the British government to retain control of their lands - rich in resources such as gold, diamonds and other minerals - which the greedy British were trying to steal from them.

During that time the concentration camps contained many South African locals who were locked up in conditions which were criminal - and illegal - then, as the later concentration camps in modern times are illegal and criminal.

Think of the conditions of the millions of Palestinians locked up in Gaza and the West Bank, and the hundreds of asylum seekers locked up in Manus and Nauru.

The world is ignoring these crimes against humanity as they continue unabated.

Genocide is what is happening in Israeli occupied Palestine and in Australia what politicians are perpetrated can not be called genocide because it does not consist of any particular groups being targeted, the outcomes are the same in the fact that people's lives have become not worth living.

HOMOPHOBIA, XENOPHOBIA, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, APARTHEID - AUSTRALIA'S POLITICIANS AND THE PEOPLE WHO ELECT THEM

Gay refugees on Nauru 'prisoners' in their home as Australia prepares to celebrate Mardi Gras

March 5, 2016 

Nicole Hasham

Environment and immigration correspondent

EXCLUSIVE

Injuries the men say they have suffered on the island nation. Photo: Supplied
 
Two gay refugees who fell in love at the Nauru detention camp say they are virtually prisoners in their home: holed up in fear for their lives after being bashed and verbally abused in a nation where homosexuality is illegal
.
As Sydney prepares for Saturday night's Mardi Gras parade - an event that showcases Australia as a global model of acceptance of gay and lesbian people - the federal government is refusing to rescue the two young Iranian men it sent to a country where they could be jailed for their sexual orientation, according to lawyers.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has so far refused to help the refugees, who say they have been repeatedly beaten, had rocks thrown at them and been called "human rubbish". His department says refugees at Nauru can accept resettlement in Cambodia.

A digitally altered photo of two gay Iranian refugees, Nima and Ashkan, who say they are being persecuted at Nauru, where homosexuality is illegal. Photo: supplied
 
The Human Rights Law Centre and international LGBT rights group All Out have begun a petition calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to urgently intervene and bring the men to Australia. The refugees, known by the pseudonyms Nima and Ashkan, live in the Nauruan community. They say they spend their lives confined in a tiny unit with the doors locked and window shades drawn - leaving just once a week to buy food, escorted by a case manager.

"We would love to live in a country where we can love each other without any barriers … and Australia is such a country," Nima told Fairfax Media through an interpreter, speaking on the phone from Nauru.
"Most of the time we just lie on the bed because we can't do anything … we are mentally suffering. We can't do anything else."

Further injuries the men have endured. Photo: Supplied
 
The men, both in their 20s, fled Iran separately after suffering persecution and headed to Australia. They met after being transferred to the Nauru detention camp and their relationship began about two years ago.

They claim to have suffered harassment from other detainees while inside the centre. After being found to be refugees and moved into the Nauruan community, they say the attacks escalated.

In one alleged assault one evening in July last year, the men were walking home carrying their shopping when their path was blocked by three local men.

The refugees allege the men asked if they were partners, which they confirmed, before the men said "f*ck you" and beat them with sticks, forcing them to the ground.

The refugees said they sustained bruising and were taken to hospital. Ashkan allegedly suffered concussion and was kept overnight

In an attack the following month, Nima was allegedly punched in the head by two men on motorbikes, who yelled "you f***ing gays".

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said it was "aware of an incident involving the individuals" and law enforcement in Nauru was the responsibility of the island's government.
The spokesman said concerns about the treatment of gay people are considered prior to a detainee's transfer to that country.

"It is not Australian government policy for illegal maritime arrivals to settle in Australia. Refugees in Nauru may apply to Cambodia for permanent settlement," he said.

Very few refugees have taken up the Cambodia resettlement option. Critics say that nation has been accused of human rights abuses, has high poverty levels and no refugee resettlement experience.

The Nauruan government had not provided comment at the time of writing.

HRLC's director of advocacy and litigation, Anna Brown, said under Nauruan law Ashkan and Nima risk being jailed for up to 14 years.

"This situation and similar ones on Manus [Island] are just so wrong ... the Australian government knowingly and deliberately allows gay men to be warehoused on tiny islands where they face assaults, prejudice and extremely harsh criminal penalties," she said.

The HRLC says former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson was notified of the case and raised it with the government. Mr Wilson, who recently resigned the post to launch a bid for Parliament with the Liberal Party, would not comment.

A spokesman for Connect Settlement Services, which assists refugees at Nauru, said it was aware of assault allegations "made by clients in June and July last year and we have provided assistance to those clients".

 

AUSTRALIA'S DAY FOR SECRETS, FLAGS AND COWARDS - BY JOHN PILGER

22 JANUARY 2016 from CounterPunch

Australia’s Day for Secrets, Flags and Cowards

by John Pilger

On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January,  “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.

It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.

The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.

This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.

In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”

He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had travelled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.

The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.

“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”

Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.

On Australia Day 2016– Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day– there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political groveling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”-abusing South Africans.

Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me, “I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”.  Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.

Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.

The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.

On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.

On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.
On Thursday February 11, Grandmothers Against Removals will address a rally in Canberra. This will start at 12 noon at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, then march to Parliament House.

John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

MANUS ISLAND - THE STORY OF ONE OF THE TRAGEDIES CAUSED BY ALL AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS

This article by Arnold Zable was published in The Age on 22 SEPTEMBER 2015.

It is a story which could be told hundreds of times thanks to Australia's politicians.

The story of Australia's indigenous population writ large in the concentration camps - "WE STOPPED THE BOATS!"  

 Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani tells of the horrors of Manus Island: out of sight, out of mind

September 22, 2015

Arnold Zable

Instead of being imprisoned and harassed, deserving detainees should be welcomed and granted asylum in Australia.

The Manus Regional Processing Centre on Los Negros Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. Photo: Andrew Meares
 
His name is Behrouz Boochani. He was born in Ilam city in west Iran on July 23, 1983. He graduated from Tarbiat Madares University in Tehran with a masters degree in political geography and geopolitics. He worked as a freelance journalist and for several Iranian newspapers – Kasbokar Weekly, Qanoon, Etemaad – and the Iranian Sports Agency. He published articles on Middle East politics and interviews with the Kurdish elite in Tehran.

Boochani's passions are human rights and the survival of Kurdish culture. With several colleagues, he founded, edited, published and wrote for the Kurdish magazine Werya, documenting Kurdish aspirations for cultural freedom. He wrote a paper advocating a federal system for Iran, protecting minority rights. The paper was delivered at a conference in France on his behalf after he was denied a passport to attend.

On February 17, 2013, officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ransacked the Werya offices in Ilam and arrested 11 of Boochani's colleagues. Six were imprisoned. Boochani was in Tehran that day and avoided arrest. On hearing of the arrests he published the information on the website Iranian Reporters, and the report was widely circulated. Boochani feared for his safety and went into hiding.

During his three months in hiding, colleagues advised Boochani he was at risk of arrest and interrogation. As a member of the Kurdish minority in Iran, and of both the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the National Union of Kurdish Students, he had experienced threats and was under surveillance. Having been interrogated and warned previously about his work promoting Kurdish culture and having signed an undertaking he would not continue this activity, he was in grave danger.

Boochani fled Iran on May 23, 2013. In July of that year he was among 75 asylum seekers intercepted by the Australian Navy en route to Australia. It was his second attempt at the crossing from Indonesia. On the first, the boat sank. He was rescued by Indonesian fishermen, and jailed on his return.

He immediately asked for asylum in Australia. He was detained on Christmas Island where he developed a deep bond with Reza Barati, a Kurdish-Iranian, also from Ilam. He was transferred to the Manus Island Immigration Detention Centre in late August 2013.

Boochani's predicament is both unique and emblematic of the horrors facing the men detained on Manus Island. There are currently about 900. Behrouz is among a group of about 100 who are refusing to be processed by PNG immigration officials, claiming the right to be processed for asylum in Australia.

He maintains his sanity between descents into depression with his continuing work as a writer and journalist, and his lifeline via various channels with a few advocates in Australia, including Castlemaine resident and refugee advocate Janet Galbraith. She is in touch with him daily, and has arranged for his writings to be translated from Farsi to English. His accounts of his incarceration on Manus Island read like a Kafka nightmare.

He continues to write articles for Kurdish publications from detention. He remains active as a human rights defender, and is recognised as such by the UN. He collaborates with Australian journalists and human rights agencies, reporting on human rights abuses occurring in the centre. He was torn apart by the murder of Reza Barati, and has reported on the death, through medical neglect, of Manus island detainee Hamid Khazaie. Boochani was one of several asylum seekers arrested and jailed without charge in Lorangau prison during a hunger strike early this year. He remained peaceful during this action.

He says his communications are monitored by Transfield, the company that operates the detention centre, and that, as a result of his reportage and his human rights activity on behalf of fellow detainees, he has been threatened, regularly searched and is subject to surveillance.

The men detained on Manus Island have not been convicted of any crime. Yet they are imprisoned. Isolated. Kept out of sight and out of mind. Those who have been found to be refugees remain in the Lorangau transit centre. They have not been resettled. The men know they are the fall guys, punished as a means of deterring other would-be asylum seekers, as are the men, women and children detained on Nauru. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have been palmed off, abandoned and all but forgotten. They are being driven mad.

The fate of Behrouz Boochani and his fellow detainees is Australia's responsibility. Instead of being imprisoned and harassed, he should be welcomed for his courageous stand for democracy and granted asylum in Australia. It is a profound irony that he is now experiencing levels of surveillance and harassment that have some parallels with his treatment by Iranian authorities.

In recent conversations with writer and trauma worker Janet Galbraith, he has said that when he sailed for Australia, he was happy because, "I knew Australia as a modern and democratic country. I thought that when I arrived in Australia they would accept me as a journalist. When I arrived at Christmas Island I said: 'I am a journalist', but I did not get any respectful response. I was wondering why it is not important for them that I am a writer. When they transferred me to Manus, I said to immigration: 'Don't exile me. Don't send me to Manus, I am a writer.' They did not care."

PEN International, a worldwide association of writers with members in more than 100 countries, has this week launched an international campaign on behalf of Boochani in collaboration with Reporters Without Borders and a range of human rights groups in Australia.

Arnold Zable is a Melbourne writer and immediate past president of PEN Melbourne.