Whitewashing murder

Terror was inflicted on asylum seekers on Manus Island on the night of 17 February.

In the days prior, our contacts inside the internment camp had been insisting that assaults were imminent, that they had been threatened with death, that the G4S guards and staff in charge of the centre – including, one assumes, the Sri Lankan military officer charged with the oversight of the facility – were demonstrating indifference towards their physical and mental safety.

Every man imprisoned without charge or trial in the Manus Island IDC is there against his will. They have all been trafficked across national boundaries with the deliberate intention of removing them from any protections of law or decency.

Every single person that we have spoken with has been very clear that, not only did they believe they would be subjected to extreme violence, but that Australian authorities in the facility deliberately placed them in a vulnerable position, and then conspired to cover up the truth of what occurred and destroy any forensic evidence.

My phone sat on the table in front of a number of my fellow RRANers on the evening of 17 February. We waited for the call that didn’t come. After a series of frantic phone calls, SMSs and Facebook exchanges over several days, we obtained an outline of the events and the horror that had occurred.

One man had told us over the phone that rooms were awash with blood. People had put their lives at risk to remain in the communication room in Mike compound while the orgy of violence raged just outside. They did so because they already understood that, without their accounts, the governments of Australia and PNG would fabricate a story exonerating the staff and the system, and blame the asylum seekers for the violence, maiming, property damage and murder.

The Cornall “Review into the Events of 16-18 February at the Manus island RPC”, commissioned by the Abbott government, had a fair go at doing all of the above.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, a blackout was imposed on all communications. Wounded people were secretly moved to locations such as the Hospital & Gateway Motel in Port Moresby. I use the term “secretly” advisedly. It would normally be expected that, after serious injury and assault occasioning death, family and police would be informed and formal statements taken as soon as the medical situation allowed.

Instead the local police in Lorengau, who had the task of investigating, were not informed of the most seriously injured people’s whereabouts, injuries or names. They weren’t given the opportunity to conduct interviews. Neither were family members. For days, desperate family members contacted advocates, including myself, terrified that their brothers, husbands and sons had been murdered. Cornall made no effort to address this deliberate information blackout.

Communication with the internment camp was not restored until 3 March. “Today they put on internet after the got all injured peoples … separate above 77 persons and close all the rooms clean all bloods and hide everything and put us all in mess 505 … 55 persons in one room”, related one detainee.

Once communication was restored, the desperate messages came through with an overwhelming sense of horror over what had transpired, and a realisation that a cold and calculated cover-up of evidence had been orchestrated.

Much has now been written about the Cornall Review. An analysis of it would illuminate multiple flaws and shortcomings. The report was restricted in scope and designed to deliver a rather specific set of recommendations. Primarily they relate to infrastructure upgrades: fencing, lighting, CCTV. It was contrived to deliver those recommendations.

Cornall remarks on the tensions, makes efforts to describe the sequence of events, considers the role of the deadly PNG “special” police mobile squad and notes that people were dragged from bedrooms to be beaten. He does indeed deliver a reasonable recitation of the deadly attack on Reza Barati that roughly accords with what advocates were told by asylum seekers.

But he makes no effort at all to achieve anything resembling justice. It is nothing more than a risk management report, with recommendation after recommendation detailing how the government ought to work with Transfield to mitigate the risk of a future “incident” initiated by asylum seekers. This is despite conceding that the actual violence came from PNG nationals, G4S staff (both local and expat) and the notorious special police mobile squad.

Cornell’s report maintains the farce that PNG is “responsible” for the centre. Clearly it is not. Some Australian official, or a person employed by Australia, would have given the order to dispose of forensic evidence. Some significant authority would have had the duty to initiate an investigation and secure the crimes scenes. Instead, someone gave the command to clean the rooms of blood, dispose of forensic evidence and black out communications.

We are now left with a few indisputable facts. In the absence of any actual forensic investigation in the immediate aftermath of the horror of 17 February, the men themselves have been forced to photograph the multiple bullet holes and some of the injuries. We have nothing to substantiate the harm done to the most severely wounded because they were held incommunicado. None of the “service” providers were asked to provide employee manifests or photos until this week. Thus none of the eyewitnesses were asked to identify perpetrators while events were fresh.

It is unlikely that the individuals responsible for the murder of Reza Barati and the maiming of several dozen others can ever be convicted of an offence. It looks as though that has been rendered impossible by the conduct of security staff and Australian officials in the aftermath. It would be interesting to know if there were any cables or orders given by centre manager, G4S employee and Sri Lankan former military officer Dinesh Perera. After all, like many Sri Lankan military officials, he would have considerable experience in the cover-up and public “management” of criminal acts perpetrated by authorities.

The Cornall Review neither explores nor addresses any of these questions. It was not designed to; it was an exercise in distraction and whitewashing. The Australian government deliberately placed people in a situation it knew to be hazardous. It created a tinderbox, stoked it with the fuel of despair, lit the match and watched the people burn. Then it scrubbed the rooms clean of evidence and used Australian tax dollars to shut down Justice Canning’s efforts to conduct a real enquiry and allow these men access to their Australian lawyer.

It looks a bit like murder by joint enterprise to me.