Transcript
Marilyn Beech: He said to me three months ago they are going to deport me. They are going to deport all the Lebanese men that they can and I will not be going voluntarily. He was offered 25 thousand dollars on the 10th of February to go back to Lebanon voluntarily. The offer was made again at the beginning of March and he again refused and he actually said on that occasion, 'I won't go back for a million dollars.' He was then told that he would be deported soon, forcibly. They took him to Lorengau police lock-up on the 29th of March. He resisted physically and was quite badly beaten up. He resisted again over the time he was there and on the 31st of March he was taken to the airport and he was injured quite badly. He recorded the video in the police cells that a lot of people have seen.
The second attempt was on the 3rd of April and on that day he had not eaten for five days. He was faint and he was taken to Lorengau hospital. He reports to me that an Australian was there and that Australian paid a local doctor $100 cash to sign a form saying that he was fit to fly. In fact he wasn't fit to fly. He believes his ribs were broken, that he had a cracked or broken vertebrae in his neck. He had been kicked and punched and his left side felt heavy and paralysed. He couldn't use his left hand properly. He couldn't stand on his left leg without pain and his kidneys hurt. A certificate was issued to say that he was fit to fly and he had not been medically examined at all. This is what he says to me and I believe him. He was taken to the airport. He struggled violently on that plane. There were at least 13 possibly as many as 17 guards and during his physical resistance a plane window was actually broken. That takes some force I would imagine. The plane, of course, couldn't take off and Azzam was taken off the plane and beaten up and taken back to Lorengau police station. In his cell later there were at least 10 men including the Australian who gave orders for Azzam to be roughed up. So he was beaten up again.
He didn't physically fight anybody on the 11th when they succeeded in taking him from Manus to Port Moresby. He said the reason for that was he knew that he couldn't take another beating. He was taken in to Bomana prison in Port Moresby where he has been ever since. Very soon after he arrived there, he was told that it was known amongst the prison staff that he would be deported back to Lebanon on the 26th of April. Azzam told me that he was told by the prison doctor that as soon as he saw Azzam, who was carried in, he couldn't walk in, and the doctor thought he ought to go to hospital immediately. I believe from what Azzam has said, that the doctor had given him to understand that he'd spoken to the commander more than once about this. The international Red Cross visited with two doctors on the 21st of April and they said he should go to hospital and permission was refused. Nothing more happened until today (26/4/17). He was told, 'we'll be taking you to the hospital, then you'll go to the airport. You're being deported today.' But when he went to the hospital the radiologist was concerned by the x-rays of his kidneys, went outside and spoke to immigration officers and shortly after that Azzam was taken back to Bomana prison which is where he is now.
Ben Robinson Drawbridge: Why does he not want to go back to Lebanon?
MB: I don't have all the details of that. From what he has said to me, the situation in many parts of Lebanon is more dangerous now since the Syrian war began. Comments that were made to me were things like, in Lebanon political parties can very quickly morph into militias and militias in your local area will demand adherence. If you are not a supporter then you're seen as an enemy. But I don't know any more than that.
People in Australia, I think, have been feeling increasingly powerless in the face of our government's behaviour on Manus and Nauru. It's not harshness, I Listen to Malcolm Turnbull say, 'it's a harsh policy and of necessity it has to be a harsh policy.' This is not harshness anymore. This is depravity.