Asylum seekers hold peaceful protest

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Detainees on Manus Island are demanding answers about the death of a refugee as advocates call for a royal commission into medical care at Australia’s offshore detention centres.

Faysal Ishak Ahmed, a 27-year-old Sudanese man, died on Saturday in Brisbane after being airlifted there from the centre in Papua New Guinea the day before.

He had reportedly been unwell for more than six months, prompting fellow detainees to complain to International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), the organisation responsible for his and others’ care on the island.

Refugees and asylum seekers on Manus rebelled against guards on Saturday night in a non-violent protest in response to Ahmed’s death, peacefully taking control of two of the four internal compounds in the detention centre.

Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian journalist and refugee who has been held on the island for more than three years, told Guardian Australia that he and others had “kicked the officers and staff out in a serious way” and “took control” of the centre.

He said it was an attempt to seek answers from the “fascist system” about the circumstances surrounding Ahmed’s death. “They must answer our questions and make it clear who is responsible,” he said.

The officers and staff returned to the centre on Sunday, he said. “Now the refugees are angry and sad but the situation otherwise looks like normal.”

Memorial services for Ahmed were to be held on Sunday evening.

Ahmed fled Sudan in 2013 and tried to reach Australia by boat.

Boochani said it was widely known within the compound that Ahmed was unwell and that he had complained of experiencing heart problems and constant headaches.

Boochani said a nurse had told Ahmed that “he was fine and didn’t need medical treatment” a few days before he died.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said Ahmed had been suffering seizures “for weeks without treatment”.

George Newhouse, the principal solicitor of the not-for-profit human rights law centre the National Justice Project, said Ahmed was the latest victim of the “systematically cruel and inhumane system”.

“It appears that Faysal did not receive appropriate treatment for his condition and we now have another death that was likely to have been entirely avoidable,” he said on Sunday.

Newhouse said Ahmed’s death was the “tip of the iceberg” and that a royal commission with broader powers of inquiry was necessary to determine the full extent of the “miserable level” of medical treatment on Manus and Nauru.

- PNC