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 &amp; 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.

Victoria Martin

Whitewashing murder

“tonight polices and G4S attack us again / Many peoples in the yard / Injure / Pease we need one to help us / May be till morning they will kill us / We are humans or animls”
Members of Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN) sat at our Monday night meeting on 17 February while desperate messages and phone calls came in.
I had been in contact for a few days with a young man, “Sam”. Sam had asked for phone numbers for the BBC because he felt that no journalist in Australia would dare to write the truth. Make no mistake; the men interned on Manus have a keen appreciation of the political reality of their illegal and unjust incarceration. They had expressed their rights quite eloquently in a letter to the department a few weeks earlier.
They had asked about processing: which country was responsible? What was the hold-up? What will happen to them? Would the Australian government take responsibility for their mental health problems? Why were their human rights not respected?
Why indeed.
Why are these people’s freedoms, rights, mental health and lives so damned expendable? Because they are mere collateral damage in the pseudo-military operation that the right wing extremists in charge of our country have launched against asylum seekers. As with any military operation, secrecy is the modus operandi, and the lives and humanity of “the enemy” are irrelevant.
As the messages were coming in, we had but one thought: how do we keep the government from covering this up? From the danger of Mike compound, where the computers and phones are located, more messages came through from Sam, who risked his life to get this information out:
“sister please we are in bad situation. Local police here follow the clients and star hit and beat them in very harmful way, also use the white weapons like knives and the bush knives and they hurt many of them those clients start bleeding and two of them are injured at neck by knivs and they bleed a lot now …
“there are more then 50 clients hurt … police hostage many clients maybe they are 6 and the local start attack everybody inside all the compounds this lead wounded clients and G4S they are more then 55 We are making great voice for all the world who can help us we are unsafe and we are under threat attacking all of us any time … This is our story and we are in your hands.”
Suddenly the communication was cut.
At 9:20pm Perth time, my Facebook feed from Manus Island went quiet. It has been quiet ever since. A RRAN colleague’s phone rang and a terrified brother of a young man on Manus told her he had been talking with his brother on the phone. He related a similar story: the phone had gone dead and he could not call back and his brother had been injured with a rock.
Soon after, a number of staff members on the island began contacting us, describing the carnage and relating a terrifying story of people in Foxtrot and Mike compounds trying to hide under beds and in containers but being pulled out from these pitiful places of refuge and brutalised.
By morning we learnt the horrible truth. A young man was dead, murdered in the carnage.
Later, I watched Scott Morrison face the Australian public and lie in an attempt to conceal the details of a cold-blooded murder.
Reza Berati’s last moments on earth are now a matter of public record. His injuries were not inflicted outside the detention centre, as Morrison claimed. It is said his throat was slashed and his head stomped repeatedly as he lay bleeding on the ground inside the compound.
Reza’s death was entirely predictable. The government knew that the Special Police unit thugs hired to assist in “managing” perimeter security had been implicated in multiple rapes and murders. The government was well aware that the unit had beaten to death a local man on Manus in July 2013.
It understood the unpredictable security situation. That is why, at every sign of trouble, Australian staff were evacuated from the compounds and asylum seekers left to fend for themselves. Many witnesses claim that local G4S staff – hired by the Australian government – joined with police in the violent assaults.
We now know that sometime during the events, the power was cut. Perhaps that is why the computers went dead. It also means the CCTV cameras were almost certainly disabled. This makes this murder appear premeditated, a consequence of an orchestrated attack. And now G4S staff guard Reza’s body, when they could be suspects in his murder.
We at RRAN demand a full and open investigation, by impartial independent authorities, into this murder and the brutal assaults of asylum seekers who were under Australian care.
We demand those responsible be brought to justice – all of those responsible.
We further demand that all those detained on Manus be brought back to Australia to have their claims for refugee status assessed while living in the community and that compensation be provided for the suffering they have endured while under the “care” of the Australian government.
[Visit the Refugee Rights Action Network at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rran.org">facebook.com/rran.org</a>.]

Murder on Manus

Victoria Martin from the Refugee Rights Action Network, Western Australia, speaks to asylum seekers on Christmas Island about recent protests.
A few short weeks ago, this desperate message arrived from a young woman I had been corresponding with in the family camp on Christmas Island:
“It’s a shame it’s a shame.I think you have heared about the protest in some camps on CI [Christmas Island].In the northwest, the single male camp thay have started the hunger strike.
“Some of them have sewed their lips together, some of them harming themselves with glasses and stab wounds on their body, officers couldn’t do anything. they were just standing and watch them”.
She was facing imminent transfer to Nauru, potentially for many years. She fled human rights abuses in her own country, only to face them in mine.
Refugee rights activists will be familiar with the litany of atrocities occurring in the internment camps. Self-harm rates rise to nearly 90 percent after a year in any of the offshore or Serco-run detention camps.
Amnesty International has described the conditions on Manus Island as a violation of the convention against torture. Doctors on Christmas Island have denounced the substandard and life threatening medical “services” provided to refugees.
Serco confirms that asylum seekers as young as 12 have been referred to by boat identification numbers.
Most of the people now on Christmas Island arrived after 19 July, the date the Labor Party as good as withdrew from the refugee convention, decreeing that no asylum seeker who arrived by boat would be settled in Australia.
Those who arrived subsequently are abandoned to a hopeless and abusive future, incarceration and suffering their expected fate.
Is anyone really surprised that desperate people in desperate situations find ways to resist?
A Refugee Rights Action Network advocate translated an interview given to the BBC Persian language service by some of the Iranian detainees in the single men’s camp on Christmas Island. The men said that up to 350 people were protesting inside the camp.
Twelve men had stitched their lips together; nine people tried to kill or cut themselves with blades or glass, and dozens were on hunger strike.
They held up signs saying “Freedom: Azadi”.
They explained to the BBC that the conditions on the island are unhygienic, and International Health and Medical Services provides bad medical care. “The Drs on the island agrees with us, they have wrote a letter to government about this”.
They also spoke of the fear of transfer to Manus Island or Nauru, family separation and their frustration over the non-processing of their cases. “The government tells us you are ‘illegal’. If we are illegal then HOW LONG YOU WANT US STAY HERE!”
At the same time as the Iranian men were giving their interview, my young friend in the family camp told me, “In Aqua,tha family camp thay have started the hunger strike for 2 days and cast slogans of freedom. Last night in our camp(Lilac) we had a meeting and we decided to do something.
“We wrote a letter to immigration and we wanted to give it to them this afternoon.That letter says that:crime is not killing a person,killing hopes and wishes is a crime as well.we have already been told that all of us will be sent to Nauru but let us know how long will it be taken?What will happen eventually for us?”
Detainees have clearly employed other means to be heard. When the government refuses to listen, what is left? Only their own bodies and the scraps of paper upon which they write out their singular need: freedom.
No one understands the importance of freedom more than those who risk their lives to pursue it. Refugees who resist imprisonment should be commended for reminding us that “killing hopes and wishes is a crime”.
Instead, they were abused and threatened: “the day shift boss came and told us with a loud voice and so angry :’It’s disgusting,if you want to sit here ,I wont let the immigration come and see you’.she threatened all men to seperate them from their wives and send them to single male camp” .
Refugee rights activists have always believed in the agency of asylum seekers: their right to determine their fate; their right to resist and protest. The government of Australia must be held accountable for the abuse it perpetrates against these people.
But asylum seekers are not victims. They are survivors who fully appreciate the injustices being done to them.
“Protes was quite respectful without any violence.It is our right to know about our destiny.we don’t know what will happen for us,but if we couldn’t contact you for a while they might have transfered us somewhere cause it’s the same procedure like always.
“They always supressed the protest but nobody knows how. We have some transfering from other camps to our camp,and it seems that tomorrow it will be transferring to Nauru.maybe we both are in the list.. thank you.”
No, my friend: thank you. Thank you for resisting tyranny. Thank you for demonstrating the value of freedom and justice. In defending your rights, you are defending mine. Azadi.

Asylum seekers on Christmas Island resist internment

Perth, 25 September: Today broke my heart a little. I sat in court watching a friend try to conduct his own judicial review of his asylum application.
Sat and watched his hands shake when the answer to his question, “Is that my lawyer?” was, “No, that is the lawyer for the government”, and he realised he was there alone. To plead for his life. To convince a judge, in a language not his own, in a system completely opaque to him, what it was about his Refugee Review Tribunal decision that denied him procedural fairness.
In some respects he did a credible job. He did manage to explain why he was late filing his appeal (he thought his lawyer did it, he was certain she said she did), and issues he had with changing lawyers. He did not know what was meant by “submission” and was clearly confused he could not submit any new evidence on why his community is unsafe. He thought that was his submission.
He could not have known that what was wanted was a forensic analysis of the Refugee Review Tribunal decision and where exactly they had denied him procedural fairness.
He mistakenly believed that there was some utility in holding up a photo of his young daughter and in a broken voice pleading for both her life and his own.
Four Serco officers escorted him in. Two gripped his arms and two flanked him on the way out. 
I thought how terrifying it must be to stand in a foreign court and plead for your life. How daunting, even for a man who did so with five Taliban bullets still lodged in his body. A man who has endured more suffering than any of us can imagine.
I almost hoped he did not know how desperate his situation is, but he noted, “I am an illiterate farmer, a simple man. How can I go up against a lawyer for the government who knows the law? I don’t know about these things.”
What I witnessed in that court today shamed me. It was not anything resembling justice. It was a travesty.
How the judge and government QC could participate in such an absurdity is beyond me. And now we wait for a decision. And a man with five Taliban bullets in his body waits to be told why it was procedurally fair to tell him it is safe to go home.
[<a href="http://www.facebook.com/rran.wa">Refugee Rights Action Network WA</a>]

Whitewashing murder

Murder on Manus

Asylum seekers on Christmas Island resist internment

An exercise in ‘procedural fairness’

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