Refugees offered resettlement

LORENGAU – 129 asylum seekers at the Australian-run centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have been officially declared refugees and are being offered the choice of staying in PNG.

A special facility has been established in Lorengau, the capital of Manus, where those found to be refugees will receive services to help them integrate into the local community.

But there is debate and some doubt how refugees will be welcomed in the Papua New Guinea community.

Some believe the processing experience is designed to make them want to return to their own countries.

Pamela Curr, from Australia’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the refugees are terrified of being put outside the detention centre because of fears of violence.

“While they’ve been in the camp, they’ve often been subject to threats from locals. Not all the locals, but many of the locals. Constantly making gestures about cutting their throats. Constantly threatening them, telling them ‘when you get out, you’re finished’.

“And so, yes they are very anxious about their safety. So of course, the situation in PNG presents a great threat to them.

Curr said the system in Manus is designed to make the inmates so fearful that they voluntarily return home.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says more than 400 other asylum seekers have left the processing centre to return to their home countries.

“The situation in Manus is really designed to break people,” Curr said. “ I’ve heard that expression over and over from different people who’d worked there. It is designed to get people to agree to go home.”

But one of the principal landowners at the detention camp site, rejects reports the refugees face threats from locals.

Porou Papi says most Manus people want to encourage those who are skilled to stay and contribute to the province.

“The locals want them to be part and parcel of their workforce – our locals in Manus, but other provinces, I don’t know,” he told Radio New Zealand’s Dateline Pacific. “But if they settle some in Manus, we don’t mind. We tell them, if you want to stay here, you’ll be a Manus citizen. ”

Papi says he has spoken to refugees who can not wait to be free from detainment and settle in PNG.

“One of them, who came to the village, a cousin of mine brought this guy in after processing him at the Lorengau camp.

“They dropped into the village and we were sitting at the beach and he said, ‘At last this is freedom. I want to be locked up there.’

“I said, ‘I’m happy with these people, they can stay here’. He said he wants to be in Manus and he wants to stay here. ‘I want to stay here forever’, that’s what he was telling us.”

Prime Minister O’Neill says his government is undertaking extensive public awareness campaigns to help support the integration of the refugees into the community.