A journalist and Iranian refugee who has been detained on Manus Island for more than four years, Behrouz Boochani, says police are telling about 400 men who remain in the detention centre that they will be moved after the weekend.
Boochani told Guardian Australia on Saturday that police were using a microphone to communicate with the refugees and asylum seekers refusing to relocate from the closed detention centre after electricity was switched off 10 days ago, and since police and officials began destroying makeshift shelters last week.
“[Police] are telling the refugees to leave the prison camp, saying tomorrow will be the last day you are here,” Boochani said. “Today, nothing is happening. Only a helicopter has flown several times over the prison camp, but I don’t know who it belongs to – navy, Papua New Guinea police or Australian police.”
Boochani said only a few people had volunteered to leave since Friday when Papua New Guinean immigration officials and police pulled down shelters in the Oscar camp and Delta compound being used as respite from the sun, and removed rubbish bins that were used to store water.
But he said those who had agreed to relocate to the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre and West Lorengau Haus in recent days were struggling, and had reported that the conditions were worse than in the detention centre.
Boochani said the refugees who had relocated to the Hillside centre had been “imprisoned and can not leave”.
“Some security officers are in front of the gate and don’t allow them to come out,” he said. “In West Longerau the condition is worse because the prison camp is not ready and still the workers are working there.”
The United Nations assistant high commissioner for protection, Volker Türk told journalists at a briefing in Geneva that the Australia and Papua New Guinea governments must “exercise restraint” and “find ways and means to resolve the current tensions peacefully”.
“The abrupt ending of services and the closure of the regional processing centre needs to involve the people who have been in this regional processing centre for years in a very vulnerable state — with not much hope in sight and we urge both governments to do their upmost to resolve this situation peacefully and urgently find solutions for these most vulnerable individuals,” Türk said.
“We have been visiting Manus Island several times over the past couple of years and reported on the very dire conditions in these centres. It is really high time to bring an end to this unconscionable human suffering.”
The Manus Island police commander, David Yapu, told the ABC on Saturday that they would not use force to remove the remaining men, despite a notice that was issued to them on Thursday that read; “If necessary, force may be used to relocate those who refuse to move voluntarily for your own sake”.
