Human Rights Watch Australia Director Elaine Pearson interviewing Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island in September 2017. © 2017 Human Rights Watch

SYDNEY
– Since October 31, hundreds of men have barricaded themselves in an abandoned complex
on a naval base where security forces have previously shot at and attacked them.
Exhausted, with no power and no running water in the tropical heat, they stockpiled
food, dug water wells, and collected rainwater in trash cans to drink. Now,
they are dehydrated, starving, and scared.

These
men are not in a war zone, though many of them have fled war in places like
Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. They are refugees and asylum seekers trapped on
remote Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. They are there because of Australia’s
harsh refugee policies.  

The UN
has described the situation as an “"unfolding humanitarian emergency." On October 31, the Australian and PNG
governments closed the regional processing center where these men have lived
for the last four years. Other less-secure facilities are available in a town a
30-minute drive from their current location. But these men, refugees and asylum
seekers, refused to leave, terrified by escalating violence against them by
some local residents in the town and
frustrated by the lack of a long-term solution to their predicament.

Since
July 2013, male asylum seekers traveling by boat to Australia have been sent to
Manus Island, while men, women and children have been sent to the isolated
Pacific island nation of Nauru. As Paul Tyson wrote
for openDemocracy, “in real terms, it is the boat people themselves the
Australian government has criminalized, dehumanized and demonized, and it is
against them that Australian politicians on both sides of party power have
uncompromisingly ‘stood firm’ in refusing to open their hearts with human
compassion to the plight of the desperate.”

Australia
says the refugees on Manus can settle in PNG,
move to Nauru, wait on Manus for possible
resettlement offers from the US or return home. So far only 25 refugees from
Manus have moved to the United States under a resettlement arrangement, and
it’s unclear how many more, if any, will follow. Failed asylum seekers are to
return to their home countries.

In
September, I visited Manus Island and PNG’s capital, Port Moresby, and spoke to 40 refugees and asylum seekers. I heard repeated accounts of violent assaults
and robberies. Groups of young local men, often intoxicated, approach refugees
both day and night, threatening them with knives, machetes, and sticks, beating
them if they don’t hand over cash and possessions.

In
August, one man was beaten so badly with a metal rod his skull was fractured
and he had to be brought to Australia for treatment. In July, a local man slashed
an asylum seeker’s forearm with a knife and authorities had to evacuate him to
Port Moresby. Police have not investigated these attacks.

Now, following
a PNG 2016 Supreme Court ruling to close the main center, Australia has handed
over operation of new facilities on Manus to the PNG government. Australia will
pay A$250 million [USD$192 million] for the next
12 months of operations for about 770 refugees and asylum seekers.

Meanwhile,
the PNG Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas has insisted that Australia remains
responsible for the 200 or so men who are failed asylum seekers and all
refugees who do not wish to remain in PNG, that is, everyone except 35 who
signed settlement papers. “PNG has no legal obligation under the current
arrangement to deal with these two cohorts and they remain the responsibility
of Australia to find third country options and liaise with their respective
governments of the non-refugees for their voluntary or involuntary return,” he wrote
in a statement.

His
message to Australia: paying off other
countries to relieve you of your international obligations is no solution. 

Some
European politicians have looked approvingly at Australia’s “harsh but effective” policies that Australia says have
reduced boat arrivals and claims have saved lives at sea. If, in fact, it is
saving lives at sea, it is only to let them suffer ashore. Two refugees on
Manus recently committed suicide. A significant number are self-harming. The
policy’s apparent success in deterrence relies upon sacrificing hundreds of
lives by warehousing them in miserable conditions and exposing them to violence
and neglect.   

With
every passing day, the refugees and asylum seekers struggle to survive at the
main center. PNG officials have repeatedly ordered men to leave the main
center, threatened to “apprehend” the “ringleaders” of the protest, and in a
particularly low act, destroyed water storage tanks and removed sun shelters
from the main center. It is unclear if PNG defense force personnel will remove
them by force or if the refugees will run out of food and water. 

 “Please help us, we don’t want to die here,” a
Sri Lankan Tamil refugee implores me over Whatsapp. It’s difficult to read
their messages and not be overwhelmed with despair. 

But
Australia can end this human rights tragedy. Wherever they end up eventually, the
Australian government needs to immediately bring these men to safety. As a
partner of Australia in resettlement, the US should be urging Australia to do
so. For Australia to abandon them on Manus Island is to invite disaster.

Members and supporters of Refugee Action Coalition rally in front of the Victorian State Library in Melbourne, Friday, November 17, 2017. David Crosling/Press Association. All rights reserved.