May, 2013: Iranian asylum seekers caught in Indonesian waters while sailing to Australia, sit on a boat in Bali, while Australia is in talks. Firdia Lisnawati / Press Association. All rights reserved.After years of legal argy bargy the Papua New Guinea (PNG) High Court has handed down its judgement on the constitutionality of the Australian government-funded Manus Island Detention Centre. That facility was set up in PNG in 2013 and has been used by the Australian government as an off-shore “processing” prison to house “unauthorized arrival” asylum seekers who have been apprehended by the Australian Navy in their attempt to lodge a claim for asylum in Australia.
The PNG High Court’s decision was a unanimous rejection of this secretive arrangement between the “border protection” agendas of the Australian government and unconstitutional foreign capital seeking interests in PNG politics. Manus Island Detention Centre has been ordered to close immediately.
Because Universal Human Rights are enshrined in the PNG constitution (unlike the Australian constitution), it was clear from the very beginning that the Manus Island Detention centre was unconstitutional and would not survive being challenged in the High Court. The deal between successive Australian governments and the PNG government to indefinitely detain boat arrival asylum seekers, and to make it clear that even legitimate asylum seekers within this system of offshore detention would never be accepted by Australia, is a clear abrogation of the human rights of those asylum seekers under the terms of the UNHCR convention to which both Australia and PNG are signatories. However, Australia and PNG approach the relationship between their UNHCR obligations and the laws of the land in very different ways. Placing conditions on the unconditional right for desperate displaced people to seek asylum in signatory nations – no matter how they arrive – is a serious abrogation of Australia’s responsibilities as a UNHCR signatory.
