PNG to keep transit centre running

Advocate says court ruling being misinterpreted

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Papua New Guinea’s government says it will close Australia’s offshore detention centre on Manus Island – but keep another asylum seeker facility open.

In April, PNG’s Supreme Court ruled the Regional Processing Centre was unconstitutional and ordered its closure.

Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato, who is currently in Canberra to discuss the future of Manus, said there are two facilities on the island.

Pato told the ABC’s Pacific Beat programme that the court order applied only to the Lombrum naval base facility, not the larger centre at Lorengau.

“We have a refugee transit centre for the purpose of resettlement in Papua New Guinea, and to all those who do not want to be settling in PNG – there’s about 560 of them – that centre is not affected by the court order so that’s where they will be held,” Pato said.

“The court order related to, and arose from, circumstances which were concerned with the naval base on Lombrum, which is where all asylum seekers are held for the purpose of refugee status determination.

“Following the determination, after all the reviews and everything else is completed, there is another centre which is called the East Lorengau Transit Centre which is not affected by the court order because there, that transit centre houses refugees who have been determined to be genuine refugees under the Vienna Convention and who would be resettled in PNG or elsewhere.”

But executive director of Refugee Legal, David Manne, said the PNG Government is misinterpreting the Supreme Court’s decision.

“The Supreme Court of PNG was not saying that there is a particular detention centre where it’s unlawful to hold refugees and there’s others where it is lawful to detain or hold refugees. It’s not saying that at all,” he said.

Manne said in the context of the ruling, it was made “very clear” there are no laws in PNG that regulate or restrict the rights and freedoms of asylum seekers.

“Indeed and that to hold and restrain and to detain a refugee lawfully in PNG is unconstitutional or illegal, means that to do so in this transit centre or any other place in PNG, would again fall foul of the law.”

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said April’s ruling would not alter Australia’s border policies.

Of the nearly 900 people in the detention centre on Manus Island, about half have been found to be refugees. - ABC