As the offshore detention policy falters, campaigners say the ‘dark chapter’ will not end until the last refugees leave PNG.
The last refugee detained on the Pacific island of Nauru under Australia’s notorious offshore detention policy has been evacuated to Australia, according to refugee advocacy groups.
The man arrived in Australia on Saturday night as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government, elected in 2022, said it would end a policy for more than 10 years.
“Over the past decade, our government has stood by and witnessed abuse, assault, neglect, harm and suffering in offshore detention,” Jana Favero, director of advocacy for the Asylum Seeker Resource Center, said in a statement Sunday. “Men, women and children sought safety and security, yet we expelled them for the sake of politics. We are grateful that the Albanian government has taken action and evacuated the remaining refugees from Nauru. A sad chapter has ended.”
Australia resumed sending refugees to Nauru in 2013 under a previously abandoned offshore detention policy that was deemed necessary to stop people traveling to Australia in small boats. Such arrivals, who were also detained in Papua New Guinea (PNG), were told that they would not have the right to settle in Australia even if they had a valid claim to protection.
Refugee groups say about 3,127 people sent to Nauru and PNG have many with mental and physical health problems as a result of prolonged detention and separation from families. The policy was widely condemned by refugee advocates, rights groups and the United Nations.
Some families forcibly separated under this project have taken their cases to the United Nations.
A short-lived medical evacuation program brought some to Australia while others found permanent homes in other countries, including New Zealand and the United States. The rest were sent back to the countries they had fled.
About 80 people remain in PNG, and campaign groups say the government must also address their situation.
“By spending billions to hold people in PNG, the Australian government cannot afford to release them there. Many need serious medical support – all need the option to come to Australia when resettlement options are available,” Australian Refugee Action Network convener Mary Hapke said in a statement.
Offshore processing first began more than 20 years ago when an Indonesian fishing boat carrying more than 400 refugees and asylum seekers ran into trouble en route to Christmas Island, an Australian territory south of Java, and the crew of a Norwegian container ship – the Tampa. I went to rescue them.
A standoff ensued after the Tampa crew asked to dock at Christmas Island and the Australian government told them to return to Indonesia.
Then Prime Minister John Howard, a Conservative, came up with the ‘Pacific Solution’ to prevent the group from reaching Australia and struck a deal with Nauru to take those rescued by Tampa.
The policy was dropped in 2007 after an election brought a Labor government to power but was then reinstated by a different Labor government in 2013 as boat arrivals began to increase and an election loomed.
Although Albanese again signaled a break with the policy, his government also said it would maintain the offshore detention facility on Nauru as a “contingency” costing millions of Australian dollars a year.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said, “Nauru’s history of maritime detention and human rights abuses will forever be etched on the record of both sides of Australian politics.” “Although they have committed no crime, refugees sent to Nauru have lost 10 years of their lives. As long as Nauru remains ‘open’ and refugees remain immobile in PNG, the dark chapter of offshore detention will never end.
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