A three-day standoff outside a Northern Territory detention centre has ended with two heavily pregnant refugees who had refused to get off a bus being taken inside.
The two women, their husbands and the 12-year-old son of one couple began their protest on Saturday after they were flown in from Nauru for the births. Both women are about eight months pregnant and one is known to have suffered complications.
“All individuals are now accommodated in immigration detention facilities in Darwin,” the ABC reported the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, as saying in a statement.
The 12-year-old boy entered the Bladin facility near Darwin on Monday. It appeared that both he and his father had been allowed to get on and off the bus.
The families had been living in a temporary resettlement camp on Nauru since being found to be refugees. They say they were told by immigration staff they would be housed in the community but the immigration department denies this, according to the ABC.
When they were taken to the detention centre the two couples refused to get off the bus. They had already spent about 15 months in detention on Nauru, according to a refugee advocate, Ian Rintoul, and believed they would be housed in the community while in Australia, given their refugee status.
Under the federal government’s offshore processing policies, none of the people, who are believed to be Iranian Kurdish, will be settled in Australia, but they remain in “limbo” on Nauru, Rintoul said.
“Nauru will not allow permanent resettlement and neither Nauru or the Australian government will assist them to get to any third country, so the truth is they are completely in limbo,” he said.
While a number of pregnant women have been flown in from Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres to give birth in better medical facilities, this is the first case where the mothers and their partners have already been found to be refugees.
Refugee and asylum seeker lawyers and advocates have said the standoff only highlights the poor conditions and medical facilities on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Morrison’s office has been contacted for comment.
