Latest news with #offshoreDetention
The Guardian
a day ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Scott Morrison sought advice to obstruct Nauru asylum seekers from accessing abortions, documents reveal
Scott Morrison overrode medical advice in the case of an asylum seeker in offshore detention trying to access an abortion, and had previously sought advice that would effectively prevent access to terminations entirely, ministerial advice reveals. Documents released under freedom of information laws show Morrison, in 2014 as immigration minister, had sought advice to deny the transfer of women to a hospital on the Australian mainland to access termination services before 20 weeks' gestation. Abortion is illegal on Nauru, except to save the mother's life, and carries a prison term of up to 14 years. Termination laws differ across Australian states, but if pregnant women in offshore detention were prohibited from accessing abortion services in Australia until after 20 weeks, it would be far more difficult to access those services at all. A handwritten note by Morrison, on a document dated June 2014, stated: 'I would also like advice on denying transfer pre 20 weeks for pregnant women.' In the same document, Morrison specified that women should only be transferred to Brisbane, not South Australia, the Northern Territory or Victoria for abortion services. Morrison did not respond to requests for comment, and Guardian Australia cannot confirm what advice he received. In the case of a woman, who was not identified in the redacted documents, medical advice recommended she be transferred to Victoria for an abortion, over Brisbane where she would have had to have waited a week for a hospital ethics panel to consider her case. That policy was in place in Queensland for women seeking a termination after 20 weeks' gestation. In Victoria, a woman could seek a termination without approval of a hospital ethics board until 24 weeks. Guardian Australia understands the woman was taken to Brisbane, rather than Melbourne, where the panel deliberated on her case. One senior source, who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, said Morrison did not specifically target abortion access. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email David Manne, a prominent refugee advocate and lawyer, said in his view the broader immigration policy at the time was part of an 'extreme deterrence agenda'. 'Inherent in the [broader] policy was conscious, calculated cruelty,' he said. 'Clearly, [the policy] was far more than reckless indifference, it was deliberate. '[It was] part of a system that was underpinned by the extreme deterrence agenda … the basic rights and dignity of people subject to the policy were essentially irrelevant.' Jana Favero, the deputy CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), who was an advocate for the centre at the time, said the documents were 'outrageous' and 'consistent' with the ASRC's experience trying to help asylum seekers get medical transfers. 'It was extremely challenging and difficult for the medical transfer from people offshore, in particular women who were pregnant,' she said. Manne claimed the Abbott government was concerned asylum seekers and refugees were using medical transfers as a back door to get into Australia. Once in Australia, and in the Australian onshore detention system, an asylum seeker could go to the court to seek an injunction to prevent being sent back to offshore detention. '[They] could plead their case under law to resist being sent back to Nauru, to further dangers of the kinds that they'd already faced,' Manne said. This wasn't the only concern held by the government. Manne said the policy was based on deterrence, to stop others seeking asylum arriving by boat. 'If we make some exception, if there's a perceived crack of light in this policy, this could see the resumption of boat arrivals, that was clearly the thinking.' Later, in 2019, Peter Dutton, by then the home affairs minister in the Morrison government, accused women in Nauru refugee centres of using rape and abortion claims as a ploy to get to Australia. Over the 18 months from 1 January 2013 to 20 June 2014, IHMS, the government contracted healthcare provider for Nauru, said there were six pregnant transferees who were taken to the mainland for a termination. In June 2014, there were 289 women in detention on Nauru, according to data collated by the Refugee Council of Australia. Numerous internal and external reviews of offshore detention centres found instances of violence and traumatic living conditions, amid allegations and reports of rape, sexual assaults. An independent investigation, by the former integrity commissioner Philip Moss, commissioned by Morrison in October 2014, found evidence of rapes and sexual violence on Nauru and Manus Island, and said incidents were often under-reported. In 2016, Guardian Australia released the Nauru files, a collection of 2,000 leaked incident reports detailing harrowing instances of abuse on the island between May 2013 and October 2015. More than half of the reports (51.3%) involved children, even though children made up only about 18% of those in detention on Nauru during the time covered by the reports. Favero said the ASRC had performed its own audit on medical transfers at the time, and said it sometimes took up to 18 months for an asylum seeker to get help on the mainland. 'From the point where there was a [doctor's] recommendation for a medical transfer, sometimes it took up to 12 to 18 months for that to happen, and it only happened as a result of a huge amount of pressure including legal action,' Favero said. In February 2019, five years later, after Morrison became prime minister, Labor and the crossbench passed the medevac bill, against the Coalition government, that established a medical panel to oversee medical transfers of people from offshore detention. That law lasted less than 10 months, before it was repealed by the Morrison government in December that year. 'The decision [to transfer a patient] should have been in doctors' hands not in bureaucrats and politicians hands which is what that legislation was,' Favero said.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
‘We just sit here': the broken men Australia's offshore detention regime left behind in Papua New Guinea
'Manus is closed. Detention is over, but we are detained still. We are here still, people are suffering a lot still. Every day we get worse, we are dying a little bit more. But nobody cares about us.' Here on a dusty hill on the edge of Port Moresby is the ragged, desperate end to Australia's illegal offshore detention regime in Papua New Guinea. Samad Abdul was 23 when he arrived in Australia by boat seeking asylum. He was on one of the first planes to Manus after Kevin Rudd's 2013 declaration that boat-borne asylum seekers would never settle in Australia. He has been held in PNG ever since, first in the Manus Island detention centre, then in Lorengau and now in Port Moresby – free to come and go from the hostel where he lives, but not to leave the country. The persecution he faced in his home in Quetta, Pakistan, has been formally recognised. He has a 'well-founded fear of being persecuted' in his homeland. He cannot be returned there and Australia has a legal obligation to protect him. Abdul is now 35. 'How long should we wait? We need to know a solution,' he says. There are 16 men housed at this hostel, in the suburb of Five Mile. A similar number are housed elsewhere in the capital. They are the final handful of more than 2,000 who have passed through Australia's offshore processing regime in PNG. Many are physically unwell, others carry deep psychological scars – 'unable to engage', in department parlance, in the resettlement interviews that might grant them a future. Some are wary, even outright hostile, at the presence of outsiders. Mistrust and fear run deep. Abdul is happy to talk. There is little else he can do. His life, he says, is wasting away. 'We do nothing, do nothing all day. We just sit here, wasting our lives.' Hundreds of refugees once detained on Manus alongside Abdul have since left PNG. They now live in Europe, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Abdul is happy for them. But it's bittersweet. 'We have been so close, we have been through so much together, and then – suddenly – they are gone, gone to their new lives. 'I try to keep in touch with them but it's hard. After a while, I stop calling. We don't speak any more. They have started their lives, they are working, they have families, they can travel now. What do I have to say: I am still here. Doing nothing.' After a series of interviews, Abdul was accepted for resettlement in Canada in 2022, but he's heard little since. In 2016, the Papua New Guinea supreme court ruled the Manus Island detention centre was illegal and ordered it closed. A year later, the Australian government settled a class action brought by detainees, agreeing to pay $70m in compensation to those it unlawfully incarcerated. Australia continues to pay to keep the men in Port Moresby, though successive Australian governments have consistently refused to say how much the 'confidential bilateral agreements' cost, at one stage telling parliament to reveal details would cause 'damage to the international relations of the commonwealth [of Australia]'. The latest agreement was signed in July last year. In Senate estimates hearings in February, the Greens senator David Shoebridge pressed home affairs officials for details on the secret deal with PNG: how much Australia was paying, and for what. 'I think Australian taxpayers have a right to know where their money is going and if there is any actual requirement for reporting on it, particularly if it is given to a third country. Are there concerns … about the very real possibility of funds provided by Australia … being directed to unlawful payments and diverted in PNG?' The home affairs secretary, Stephanie Foster, declined to answer, saying the agreement with PNG was 'confidential', and subject to a public interest immunity claim. Zaki Haidari, a refugee rights campaigner with Amnesty International Australia, says the handful of men left in PNG are 'broken physically and mentally'. 'Their suffering is the direct result of Australia's inhuman asylum policies, which has caused prolonged and devastating harm.' He argues Australia remains 'morally and legally responsible' for the men it sent into offshore processing. 'It was the Australian government that forcibly transferred them to PNG and outsourced its legal and moral obligations. For over a decade, these men are forced to lived in limbo, separated from their families and loved ones, with no path to settlement, no future and no hope. 'Australia must reckon with the immense human cost of these policies and acknowledge the damage inflicted on these men, who only ever asked for protection.' In January, the UN Human Rights Committee published two decisions that stated Australia retained responsibility for the welfare of those it sent into offshore detention on Nauru or elsewhere. 'A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state,' committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said. 'Where there is power or effective control, there is responsibility,' he said. 'The outsourcing of operations does not absolve states of accountability. Offshore detention facilities are not human rights free zones.' A spokesperson for Australia's home affairs department said the government of PNG was responsible for the men who remained in PNG. 'The Australian government does not have any role in the ongoing management of, or service delivery arrangements for, individuals remaining in PNG. 'Individuals are encouraged to engage with the PNG Immigration and Citizenship Authority to receive assistance accessing additional supports and to achieve a permanent migration outcome and start the next phase of their lives.' Questions to PNG's Immigration and Citizenship Authority went unanswered. In the oppressive heat of a Port Moresby afternoon, Abdul has questions of his own. 'How long do we wait? What will happen to us? We deserve answers.'
