For gay men who fled persecution in their homelands to seek asylum in Australia, detention on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island offers a special kind of torture.
Homosexuality is illegal in PNG.
[...]
A detainee advocating for gay men on the island said there were about 20 in the prison camp.
Amir Taghinia said it was clear there were no options for these men on Manus, or in other parts of PNG, if Australia forced them to stay.
"We have witnessed many of these guys have been very very badly traumatised. They have been assaulted, they have been insulted," he said.
"These people will face a very harsh life. They will be abused in Papua New Guinea. They will very likely get into trouble and they will eventually be persecuted by the Papua New Guinea government."
Many of these men are fleeing regimes which could persecute them for the sexuality. And Australia is planning to dump them in the hands of a government which would do exactly the same. That's both immoral, and a blatant violation of the Refugee Convention.
As for what can be done about it: if PNG persecutes people on the basis of their sexual orientation, then that is immediate grounds for victims to be granted asylum here, in New Zealand. And if Australia doesn't like that, fuck them.