Aussies deny Manus conditions akin to torture

 Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has denied allegations that conditions in an asylum-seeker camp in Papua New Guinea amounted to torture and insisted the off-shore processing regime would stay.

Amnesty International has described conditions at PNG’s Manus Island as “excessively cruel and prison-like”, with a report released last week saying some detainees were surviving in stifling heat on just half a litre of water a day. Morrison said the government would consider recommendations in good faith, but denied that conditions amounted to torture and said there was no restriction on the amount of water people received.

“No, I don’t (agree),” he said, on whether conditions were tantamount to torture. 

The Amnesty report said some aspects of detention on Manus, where some 1,000 people are being held, violated Australia’s obligation to treat all persons in detention humanely.

It said conditions in compounds were cramped and stifling hot, detainees were being denied sufficient water and medical help, and some had reported finding snakes in their room and flooding when it rained. 

Morrison told a weekly briefing in Sydney on Friday the reports would be reviewed, the findings verified and assessed under the broader context of normal operations. The Amnesty report comes after the United Nations refugee agency last month reported that the Pacific island camps failed to meet international standards of treatment.

Morrison said while the government would seek improvements where they could be made, there would be no change to its policy of processing those arriving on unauthorised boats at the offshore camps.

“All I am saying is that the key recommendation from both the UNHCR and Amnesty report is that offshore processing should be abolished. 

“We are clearly not going to do that,” he said.

“This system of harsh conditions and humiliating treatment is a deliberate effort to pressure people to return to the desperate situations they have fled from,” said Amnesty International Australia’s Claire Mallinson. – AFP