Transcript
Conditions continue to be deliberately degraded in the Manus Island detention centre as its October closure date draws closer. The Kurdish journalist and detainee Behrouz Boochani says pressure is building on its 800-odd residents in the form of threats and overcrowding.
"Australian and PNG immigration each day call some refugees to their office and say, 'what is your plan? You have to leave here.' Also they want to destroy Foxtrot compound by the end of June, so all the people will go into other compounds and make it too crowded so people will have to leave."
Mr Boochani says authorities are finding new and petty ways to coerce the men into accepting repatriation or resettlement in PNG.
"Another way is by reducing what's available in the shop. Each week one item is removed from sale. And they are stopping all the activities like English classes, gym and excursions. We expect they will keep finding new ways to put pressure on us."
A barrister with the Australian Lawyers Alliance Greg Barns says it is illegal to coerce asylum seekers to return to countries where they were persecuted, a practice known as constructive refoulement.
"Effectively it's putting a gun at their heads and saying, 'you either live in these intolerable conditions or alternatively you return to the country that you came from.' And of course in many cases returning to the possibility of persecution. In a sense they are going back there under duress. That can amount to constructive refoulement."
Faced with a choice between financially assisted repatriation or forced deportation are about 200 Manus men denied refugee status. The law professor and president of Australia's Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, says for those men PNG's dubious immigration system creates the risk of refoulement.
"In some cases their claim for refugee status may have been denied rightly and some have been denied it wrongly. Now those who are entitled to that status as a refugee may very well be constructively refouled, or returned to the country of persecution. And I think as a matter of international law, and now maybe also it seems Australian law, to have inflicted this risk is a continuing responsibility of the Australian government. The general position of international law is that if a country like Australia has effective control over the lives of these people then it is responsible for what happens to them."
Raising money for Manus men to challenge their non-refugee status is the advocate Anne Moon.
"I've been through their immigration papers and the process is quite clearly flawed. It's said to be under PNG immigration but it's under Australian guidance, I suppose you could say. And I have a lot of medical records as well because I'm a medical advocate at the same time and it shows quite clearly the existence of former torture to a lot of these men and yet they are given a negative assessment."
About 2000 Manus detainees are due to share a $US53 million dollar settlement reached with the Australian government, after seeking damages for wrongful imprisonment and suffering. But Anne Moon says the amount of money each man could receive is so low, she wouldn't want them to devote it to legal fees.