One asylum seeker has died and two more have been transferred to Australia under critical condition – one with a serious head injury and the other with a gunshot wound – after violent erupted in Manus Island last night.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison confirmed the death at a press conference held in Darwin today.
“The news of a death is a great tragedy,” he said. “Our sympathies are extended to the transferees – that person’s family and friends who would have been in the facility as well.”
Mr Morrison said asylum seekers absconding from the offshore detention centre faced “much greater risk” by placing themselves at the mercy of local PNG law enforcement tasked with securing its perimeter.
“If people choose to remove themselves from that centre then they’re obviously putting themselves at much greater risk and in an environment where there is violent behaviour,” he said. “Those who are breaching the perimeter fence and going out of the centre, then this is a disorderly environment in which there is always great risk. When there are people who are charged under Papua New Guinea law to maintain law and order in that situation, now if you behave an unruly way and in a disorderly way, then you subject yourself to the response of law enforcement.”
13 of the 77 injuries sustained during the riot were deemed “serious”.
Mr Morris further reiterated that the local PNG police force did not enter the centre’s infrastructure, the jurisdiction of G4S, the contracted security agency who were compelled to launch an internal investigation of staff last month after it came to light that a security guard had taken to social media to ridicule an asylum seeker who had swallowed a pair of nail clippers.
“I am advised that G4S were able to protect critical infrastructure and take control of the facility within the centre without the use of batons,” Mr Morrison said. “We don’t know what occurred outside the centre and that obviously will be the subject of an investigation into that person’s death.”
More details to follow…
Via SMH
Image via Getty
