End forced deportations
July 13, 2017
Ruth Halbert
Dear Prime Minister,
On behalf of the 350th man on manus Island and all the men,women and children on Nauru, it is urgent that Australia stop forcibly sending refugees back to the countries they have fled from.
Five men have been forced to return to Pakistan after enduring four years of torture and illegal detention on Manus Island. As Marilyn Beech writes:
Whatever glib phrase or technicality the DIBP and Border Force - or their Minister - would use about these men's return, the facts are that they did not want to return to one of the most dangerous places on Earth, and have only done so as a result of coercive pressure, and a flawed assessment of their claim to be refugees.
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Why would anyone remain on Manus for four years - and struggle to remain in PNG - if he had not been fleeing even worse danger at home?
I know what sorts of things the men Australia has tortured on Manus since 2013 have endured. I know that proud, healthy young men do not put up with imprisonment, humiliation, illness, lousy food, medical neglect, boredom, racist provocation, denial of human rights and separation from everyone and everything they hold dear, for four years, without the most compelling reasons. Why would they? It has cost every man his health and youth, and it has cost four men their lives.
One of the men had legal representation in PNG, and an injunction had been obtained preventing his deportation. I had believed him to be safe for this reason. I am therefore shocked to the core to find him gone, but I don't know the circumstances surrounding the men's removal from PNG. If Australia has acted illegally, I look forward to the government paying massive compensation to these of my fellow human beings whom it has wronged.
Ludicrously, the travel documents prepared for the men for their return journey to Pakistan cite, as the reason for their removal, ''illegal stay'' in PNG. They did not enter or stay of their own free will, and were only ever in PNG because the Australian government forced them there.
Shame on Australia. Our government has dishonoured every decent person who ever made a sacrifice for this nation. Shame on those of our people who have willed themselves to ''not know'' what Australia has done to human beings on Manus, Nauru and Christmas Island, and in the onshore detention centres, and in the suburbs of our cities, where people who came to us seeking protection and a new life have set themselves alight, thrown themselves under trains, jumped from the balconies of units, hanged themselves, cut themselves, poisoned themselves, watched their friends die.
https://www.facebook.com/marilyn.beech2/posts/10155476986447716
Prime Minister, refoulement is illegal. The men on Manus Island and the men, women and children must be brought to Australia. Bring them here.