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Australians protest against unfolding 'emergency' in offshore detention camp

By REUTERS

NOVEMBER 4, 2017 10:25

SYDNEY - More than 1,000 people protested in Australia on Saturday against the treatment of hundreds of asylum seekers in an offshore detention centre that the United Nations has described as an "unfolding humanitarian emergency".

About 600 men have barricaded themselves inside the camp on remote Manus island in Papua New Guinea, defying efforts by Australia and PNG to shut it. Food, running water and medical services were cut off by Australia four days ago.

Australian authorities want the men moved to a transit centre elsewhere on the island at the start of a process the asylum seekers fear will result in them being resettled in PNG or another developing nation.

The men also fear violent reprisals from the local community.

"These people have committed no crime other than to do what every single one of us would do if we thought our lives, or our family's lives, were at risk," Federal Greens lawmaker Adam Bandt told the crowd in Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city.

Another smaller protest was staged in Sydney.

The Manus island centre, and one on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, have been key parts of Australia's disputed "Sovereign Borders" immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores.

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