And its done

Last week, Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister said he intended to abolish the death penalty. And yesterday, he did it, with all existing death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

This leaves Tonga as the last death-penalty state in the South Pacific. They last murdered someone in 1982, and have been considered "abolitionist in practice" for decades. Its time now for them to make that practice a legal reality, and make the Pacific a death-penalty-free zone.

One country at a time

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister has announced that he intends to abolish the death penalty:

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape says his government is doing away with the death penalty and those now on death row will instead serve life sentences without parole.

Marape told members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church holding their 33rd synod in Port Moresby that PNG was a Christian nation and the death penalty was out of place.

"The Bible says thou shall not kill and the government has removed, by policy, the clause on the death penalty," PNG newspaper The National on Wednesday quoted him as saying.

This is good news - things had seemed to be going in the other direction in PNG, with a move just last year to finally allow executions. But an announcement isn't law, and PNG's death row prisoners will only be safe from execution when legislation is passed.

When enacted, Tonga will be the only (independent) holdout in the South Pacific. So I guess we can expect the pressure to go on them to make Oceania a death-penalty-free zone.

Bougainville votes for independence

Earlier in the month, Bougainvilleans went to the polls in a landmark referendum to decide on whether they would remain part of Papua New Guinea or become independent. Yesterday, the results came in, with over 97% support for independence. The referendum wasn't binding - instead it means negotiations with the PNG government - but as part of the peace agreement which ended the civil war on the island, you'd expect it to be respected (and you'd expect New Zealand, which helped broker that agreement, to push for that). So hopefully in a few years time the Pacific will have a new nation.

We need to do more than this

Jacinda Ardern has again approached Australia with New Zealand's offer to save refugees from their concentration camp on Manus Island - and again been rejected. So instead, we're giving aid to Papua New Guinea to help them:

New Zealand will give Papua New Guinea and aid agencies up to $3 million to help care for Manus Island refugees.

[...]

"We intend to work with PNG and other agencies like the International Red Cross to financially support them with any additional needs that may need to be met while those refugees remain on the island."

Its better than nothing, but we must do more. We cannot allow people to be tortured in concentration camps. If Australia opposes them coming to New Zealand, then fuck them - we should talk directly to Papua New Guinea. The New Guineans don't want them, we do, so it should be easy to negotiate a deal. Especially as the refugees have already been assessed.

Meanwhile, while we're all celebrating Australia's vote against bigotry today, lets also remember that they are currently detaining people who fled countries where they fear persecution on the basis of their sexuality in a country which will persecute them on the basis of their sexuality. And that is blatantly failing to meet their obligations under the Refugee Convention.

Rolling over for Australia

Currently, the Australian government has abandoned the inmates of its Manus island concentration camp without food, water, or power in a tropical hellhole. Their minions the PNG Army are preventing people from delivering food to those in need. The intention is clear: to starve them into leaving and force them into even worse conditions in a new concentration camp or in the PNG community.

This is a clear human rights abuse and humanitarian emergency, and the natural instinct of many New Zealanders is to step in, help out, and offer a home to those Australia is trying to murder. Jacinda Ardern went to Australia over the weekend promising to raise the issue again. Instead, she rolled over for the Aussies:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has ruled out negotiating directly with Papua New Guinea over taking Manus Island detainees, despite New Zealand's offer to Australia to take 150 refugees being turned down.

[...]

Mr Turnbull said Australia was concentrating on an agreement to resettle 1250 people in the United States, an agreement that would cover hundreds more people than New Zealand was offering to take.

But he did not shut the door completely, saying "in the wake" of that, Australia could then "consider other ones".

Ms Ardern said she considered the deal very much still on the table, while acknowledging Australia clearly was not going to act on it anytime soon.

She was asked whether she'd put the offer to PNG instead.

"No, no, because the offer is still under active consideration by Australia so there is no need to do so."

Except Australia isn't "actively considering" anything. Instead it is literally trying to starve refugees to death to force them to give up their claims. Donald Trump is not going to rescue Australia's victims. So we have to. And if that means going around Australia and negotiating directly with PNG, then so be it - because people are going to die if we don't.

That's what's at stake here. A leader with a clear moral vision would see that. Instead, Ardern is giving us mealy-mouthed bullshit. So much for her and her government's principles.

PNG tells Australia where to go

Papua New Guinea appears to have decided that it no longer wants to host refugee concentration camps for Australia:

Refugees held on Manus Island who do not want to resettle in Papua New Guinea will not be forced to, and Australia must find them somewhere else to go, the PNG government has warned.

In a reflection of PNG’s growing frustration with Australia’s offshore processing policy the country’s minister for immigration and border protection, Petrus Thomas, issued an unprecedentedly forceful statement late on Sunday, telling Australia it held legal, financial and moral responsibility for the refugees held on Manus.

The statement was released publicly, but is clearly aimed at officials in Canberra, as the two governments negotiate this week on managing the refugee population beyond the slated closure of the Manus detention centre on Tuesday.

Pretty much no-one on Manus Island wants to resettle in Papua New Guinea, mostly because it is simply not a safe environment for them. Refugees who have attempted to become part of the local community have been assaulted. So this is basicly saying that Australia needs to take everyone and find them a new home. And given their decision on the illegality of the concentration camps, I doubt the PNG courts are going to permit forcible rendition to Nauru, so that's got to be a new home that they agree to go to. Which is exactly what Australia doesn't want to do.

Pretty obviously New Zealand could help here. And we should be talking to the PNG government about what we can do to prevent further suffering and human rights abuse by Australia.

The obvious solution

Australia is planning to cut off food, water and electricity supplies to its Manus Island concentration camp next week, and (despite PNG government assurances) has brought in a notoriously brutal police unit to clear the camp by force and force the detainees into other camps. While their detention has been ruled illegal, the refugees do not want to move because the new camps are unsafe - refugees have been assaulted and even killed by locals, and there have been explicit threats if they move. Australia's response to this has simply been to shrug their shoulders and deny responsibility. Having kidnapped these people, rendered them to Papua New Guinea, and detained them illeglaly for years in appalling conditions, they're now pretending that they have no responsibility for what happens afterwards.

This is simply bullshit, and there's an obvious solution: PNG should return the refugees to Australia, where they belong in the first place. If they won't (or can't, because they're basicly an Australian vassal), then there's another alternative: us. New Zealand has offered to take these refugees, and our offer is still open. Australia opposes this, because we eventually give refugees citizenship, which means they could then in theory visit or even move to Australia (as if anyone would want to go to the society which rejected, abused and tortured them). But Australia can't have it both ways and deny responsibility while also claiming the right to determine these people's fates. And to be honest, we shouldn't be talking to them about it anyway. Instead, we should be making our offer directly to the government of Papua New Guinea.

More Australian cruelty

The Australian government is currently trying to close its Manus Island concentration camp and abandon its victims (who they should be giving homes in Australia) to persecution in Papua New Guinea. But there's a group of refugees who face extra persecution there: gay men:

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.

Australia kills again

Australia is reportedly planning to storm its Manus Island concentration camp to suppress protests there. Meanwhile, their refusal to provide proper medical care to those imprisoned there has claimed another life:

A refugee in Australia's immigration detention network on Manus Island has died, with local police suggesting the man had taken his own life.

The man was understood to be an Iranian refugee who had a history of mental illness. Manus provincial police commander David Yapu said a crime scene had been established.

[...]

According to Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochani, who is also on Manus Island, the refugee concerned had a long history of mental illness and distress.

He was reportedly jailed following a mental breakdown at the regional processing centre, but was released, only to be found wandering the streets of Lorengau without clothes.

Australia's concentration camps are full of people in utter despair, many of whom have already attempted suicide. In those circumstances, attempting to clear them by force to force refugees into an even more dangerous situation seems to be a recipe for deaths. And every single one of the corpses should be laid at the feet of the Australian government. They killed this man. They are his murderers. And they should be held accountable for it.

Meanwhile on Manus Island...

Meanwhile on Manus Island, Australia is trying to force refugees out of its concentration camp and into the community by cutting off power and water supplies. Strangely, the refugees don't want to go. Why not? Because if they leave, this will happen:

A Sudanese man and another from Iran were brutally attacked with machetes in two separate incidents over the weekend before an Afghan refugee was mugged on Sunday morning.

The Refugee Action Coalition said that at about 10pm on Saturday night, up to eight local men entered a house in Lorengau town and attacked the Sudanese refugee, slashing his leg with a bush knife.

The coaltion says in the second attack, about six hours later on Sunday morning, the same people responsible for the first assault, robbed an Iranian refugee before hacking his wrist open, cutting veins and tendons.

It said later that morning, while refugees were assisting the two men at Lorengau hospital, the Afghan refugee was robbed of his phone and belongings by another group of locals.

Papua New Guinea is simply not safe for refugees. By trying to force them into an unsafe situation, the Australian government is contributing to their continuing persecution. As for the solution, if Australia refuses to accept responsibility and allow the refugees into Australia, the New Zealand government should step in and offer them a home here.

Some justice for the Pacific solution

Since 2012 the Australian government has detained thousands of refugees in a concentration camp in Papua New Guinea. The refugees have been tortured, denied medical care, and subjected to cruel and inhumane conditions in an effort to encourage them to withdraw their asylum claims and return to the countries which persecuted them. Throughout this, the Australian government has publicly denied that it is doing anything wrong or illegal. But now in an implicit admission of guilt, they've agreed to compensate their victims:

The Australian government has agreed to compensate 1900 asylum seekers currently or formerly held at the Manus Island detention centre, in what may be Australia's largest ever human rights-related settlement.

Lawyers Slater and Gordon confirmed the Commonwealth had agreed to reach a conditional settlement of $70 million plus costs, to be distributed to asylum seekers based partly on the length of their detention.

The Victorian Supreme Court this morning heard the parties had reached an in-principle agreement to settle the claim on behalf of 1905 current former detainees, though the settlement was not yet formally approved.

In settling the case, the government will avoid a long and potentially damaging trial, which was set to last about six months and reveal explosive claims about life at the Manus Island regional processing centre.

Of course, the settlement will say that the Australian government and its camp-guards are not admitting any sort of wrongdoing. But the fact that they're paying compensation shows that that is a lie: governments do not compensate people unless they have wronged them. They also don't settle if they think they're going to win - the usual pressure to avoid legal costs simply doesn't apply to a government with effectively infinite resources compared to the plaintiffs. So, by paying up, Australia is effectively admitting that its victims' claims are true.

Compensating past victims is some justice. But as long as the camps are still open, Australia's crime is ongoing. The only true justice is to close the camps, free the refugees, grant them all asylum in Australia - and prosecute those responsible for this criminal policy. And if Australia doesn't do the latter, then the international community must.

Harsh treatment

Australia's entire refugee policy is predicated on harsh treatment. By imprisoning refugees indefinitely and torturing them in island camps, they hope to deter others from seeking refuge in Australia. But the same mindset applies within the camps as well, with the Australian government deliberately imposing harsh living conditions in its Manus Island gulag in an attempt to force refugees to leave:

For more than a year, camp managers and security staff have waged a campaign to make Australia’s detention centre for refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island as inhospitable as possible, leaked documents reveal.

A plan drafted in early 2016 outlines moves to coerce those recognised as refugees into leaving the detention centre and accepting resettlement in Papua New Guinea, while pushing asylum seekers to abandon their protection claims and return home.

[...]

One plan mooted was to forcibly remove refugees and asylum seekers from the detention centre into the transit centre in a single day.

Planning documents that proposed “moving residents into accommodation with less amenity than they currently have” forecast the forced removal raised an “extreme” risk of violence and protests, and warned of the potentially “catastrophic consequences” of using the PNG police, whom Australian authorities describe as “not trained” for the relevant tasks.

The Australian government seems to be on the verge on implementing those plans. And the result will likely be a riot. The core problem is that the refugees do not feel safe in Papua New Guinea. Those who have left the camp have been beaten and assaulted by locals. The camp has been stormed and shot at. Refugees have been murdered. Against that background, Australia's plan to just throw people out by force looks like a deliberate policy to expose people in its care to ongoing persecution and endanger their lives. And that is simply immoral.

Clearing out the gulag

Back in April, Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled that Australia's concentration camp on Manus Island was illegal and ordered Australia to come up with a plan for resettling its victims. Instead, Australia appears to be planning to clear out the gulag and dump its refugees in Papua New Guinea with nothing, while starving out those who refuse to move:

Australia and Papua New Guinea are escalating efforts to clear the Manus Island detention centre, telling refugees they must settle elsewhere in PNG, while warning they are preparing to deport asylum seekers whose protection claims fail.

“There is no future for you here,” detainees have been told by PNG immigration officials. Processing at the detention centre “will end soon” and all those held within forced out. The police will be sent in to forcibly move those who refuse to cooperate.

[...]

The document hints at “changes to the services and conditions” for the different groups.

Those inside the detention believe those found not to be refugees will have their conditions significantly worsened in an effort to encourage them to leave. Their rights to limited movement, and their ability to access cigarettes, phone credit at the internal store, are expected to be cut.

“We will give you further information about these changes soon,” the document says.

Why wouldn't people want to move elsewhere? Because Papua New Guinea is not safe for refugees. Refugees who have left the camp have been beaten and abused; others have been left destitute and homeless due to the lack of any real planning or support for them. Australia's plan seems to be to ignore all this, dump them on the streets of PNG, and let them be brutalised and die. Its just another example of their callous and inhumane approach.

But the refugees are Australia's responsibility, and Australia should be providing a home for them. They can not be allowed to refuse to do so.

Australia deliberately ignores the abuse of refugees

That's the conclusion of a new report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Australia's refugee concentration camps:

Australia is intentionally ignoring appalling human rights abuses against men, women and children being held in detention on Nauru, a new report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International says.

The report said Australia's offshore detention policy had resulted in the abuse of refugees and asylum seekers, which had been hidden behind a wall of secrecy.

[...]

The researchers' report, based on interviews with 84 refugees and asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Kuwait and Afghanistan, as well as service providers at the Australian-funded facility, said that Canberra could not conceivably be unaware of the detention centre's shortcomings.

"The Australian government's failure to address serious abuses appears to be a deliberate policy to deter further asylum seekers from arriving in the country by boat," Human Rights Watch said in a statement accompanying the report.

Which means that it might not just be Australia's hired camp guards on the hook for crimes against humanity charges in The Hague.

The full report is here.

Australia ordered to resettle refugees

The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has ordered the Australia government to come up with a plan to resettle refugees from its Manus Island concentration camp:

The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has ordered the Australian government to provide a resettlement plan for immigration detainees being held on Manus Island, with answers required this week.

On Tuesday, the court said a plan for resettlement of the about 900 asylum seekers being held on Manus should be offered on Thursday, after ruling in April that the Australian-government funded detention centre was illegal

[...]

The Australian government could share liability for more than $1 billion in compensation claims from people illegally detained on Manus Island, as lawyers for detainees seek more than $450 for each day detainees have been held in the centre.

The April decision left the men, more than half of whom have been found to be genuine refugees, in limbo as locals resist resettlement in PNG.

Its unclear whether Australia will even show up to court - and if they do, I suspect their "resettlement plan" will be "the refugees go back to where they were being tortured". And even if they do accept their responsibility to settle them in Australia (or are ordered to), after years of torture and abuse their victims have absolutely no reason to trust them.

New Zealand could help here, by providing people with a way out of Australia's concentration camps. And we should.

A worrying sign in PNG

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill is in trouble. Facing arrest for corruption, he's had student protects and now calls for a general strike to force him to resign. Just yesterday, the PNG Supreme Court overturned his stooge Speaker's manipulation of the parliamentary process, ordering a recall of parliament to allow a vote of no confidence to be held. So naturally, it's time to roll out the "anti-terrorism" powers:

The National Security Advisory Committee in Papua New Guinea is expected to give police the power to arrest anyone inciting strike action within essential services.

The Committee was convened following threats from unions in the air transport and maritime sectors, who called on Mr O'Neill to step down at midnight last night to face fraud allegations.

The Chief Secretary to government, Isaac Lupari, told the newspaper the National, that the committee could invoke two laws which enable police to arrest people advocating violence, disruption of public services and destruction of public property.

Coming from a government whose police thugs have shot unarmed protesters (and hunted them through the streets in order to beat and shoot them), this isn't a good sign. Instead it sends a clear message that the current government is planning to cling to power by force.

Australia covers up sexual assault on Manus Island

Australia's refugee gulag on Manus Island has seen sexual assaults, rapes, even a murder. Now it turns out that their mercenary camp guards are being paid to keep silent about these crimes:

Wilson Security paid at least one Australian security guard to keep quiet about an alleged sexual assault of a local Manus Island worker, in a number of separate payments of up to $15,000 made by the company.

7.30 understands at least one guard, who was present on Manus Island on the evening of the alleged assault and quickly removed from the island the following day on July 16 2015, was paid just over $15,000 by the security company.

The money included the worker's remaining annual leave entitlements and was offered as a non-disclosure payment, meaning the worker could not discuss the incident, nor the work he was doing for the company in the offshore detention centre.

The removal of the workers involved in the alleged rape was considered controversial at the time as local Papua New Guinea police claimed they had not been able to investigate the matter after the local PNG worker had been found naked and disorientated in the men's bathroom on the island in the early hours of the morning.

There is a name for this: perversion of the course of justice. Those involved need to face charges for it. What's worse is that this is ultimately being paid for with public money. But I guess once you start paying people to run concentration camps and torture refugees, then little things like perverting the course of justice and undermining the rule of law seem inconsequential.

New Zealand should take Australia's refugees

Yesterday, Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court found that the Australian refugee concentration camp on Manus Island was illegal and violated human rights. Shortly afterwards, Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill announced that the centre would be closed and demanded Australia take its refugees back. Australia, of course, is refusing, and alternating between "your country, not our problem" and promises to ship them to Christmas Island or Nauru, interwoven with threats to cut off aid to Papua if it doesn't ignore its constitution and continue to illegally detain and torture Australia's refugees.

Of course, there is a solution: New Zealand could take them. We've done it before, when Australia refused to accept refugees from the Tampa, and we should do it again. We've got space - and even a standing offer. But Australia refuses to accept that out of fear the people it has illegally detained, brutalised and tortured would become New Zealand citizens and use our open border to go to the very country which mistreated them. Yeah, right. But that does say something of Australia's high opinion of itself that they think they can abuse people in this way and yet they'll still want to live there...

But to be honest, given their policies, offending the racist, torturing Australians is a bonus, not a drawback. They need to be shown that not even their closest friends will accept their conduct. We should talk to the Papuan government directly, and offer to take all the detainees from Manus. And if Australia doesn't like it, tough.

Australia's gulag is illegal

Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court has found the detention of refugees in Australia's concentration camp on Manus Island to be illegal:

The five-man bench of the court ruled the detention breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution.

There are 850 men in the detention centre on Manus Island, about half of whom have been found to be refugees.

The Supreme Court has ordered the PNG and Australian Governments to immediately take steps to end the detention of asylum seekers in PNG.

"Both the Australian and Papua New Guinea governments shall forthwith take all steps necessary to cease and prevent the continued unconstitutional and illegal detention of the asylum seekers or transferees at the relocation centre on Manus Island and the continued breach of the asylum seekers or transferees constitutional and human rights," the judges ordered.

In one of two lead judgments, Justice Terence Higgins said the detention also breached asylum seekers' fundamental human rights guaranteed by various conventions on human rights at international law and under the PNG constitution.

Australia is saying they will not take the refugees back. But they're Australia's responsibility. There's also the question of compensation from the PNG government for years of unlawful detention and abuse (and, potentially, from Australia's corporate subcontractors, who did the actual detaining and beating). But Australia will probably try and walk away from that too. Which is hardly going to encourage other countries to deal with their mess. Which means that Australia will have to admit responsibility and start dealing with refugees again, rather than trying to shove them out of sight, out of mind onto its poorer neighbours.

More beatings in Australia's gulags

In February 2015, refugees in Australia's Manus Island concentration camp in Papua New Guinea went on hunger strike to protest against their treatment. Australia's response? Send its paid thugs to beat them, leaving some with lasting injuries:

Asylum seekers have also alleged that they were beaten by private security guards during an operation to end a January 2015 Manus Island hunger strike, and have told Fairfax Media in a series of letters that they were jailed in the nearby Lorengau police cells for up to 21 days.

Leaked files from Broadspectrum, the company contracted to run the Manus Island and Nauru centres, support some of the claims of injury and placement in the police cells.

The company's files show detainees sought medical treatment after complaining of nerve pain in their arms, which they claimed was the a result of having their wrists tightly bound by plastic restraints during the hunger strike.

One detainee wrote in a letter that he was kicked in the head by security guards while he was in the Lorengau police cells and was left shirtless during his 21 day stint in the cells. Another said the cells were filthy and that "the toilet sewage would come to where we slept".

An Iraqi asylum seeker has claimed in a letter that he was beaten about the head with a stick by security staff, resulting in damage to his eyesight and the loss of teeth.

Beating people because they peacefully protest against their treatment is not the action of a peaceful and democratic state. Instead, its the action of a tyranny. And that's what Australia's racist, anti-refugee policies are gradually turning it into: a country which uses torture and oppression and threatens to jail those speaking up about it.