SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — More than 750 asylum-seekers held in a Papua New Guinea detention camp launched legal action Wednesday to be moved to Australia after a court in the Pacific nation found the centre unconstitutional.
Australian lawyers acting for the 757 men — who are held on Manus Island as part of Canberra’s tough policy of sending those who try to reach Australia by boat to camps in PNG and Nauru — sought an “urgent injunction” in the High Court.
“The group of 757 asylum-seekers also seek a writ of habeas corpus alleging the Australian and PNG governments have committed gross human rights violations and high international crimes, constituting crimes against humanity,” the lawyers said in a statement.
The court action came as Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull admitted on national radio that he sympathised with “the misery that many of those people are in”.
But he added that the asylum-seekers held in offshore centres would not be allowed to settle in Australia.
Last week, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled that detaining asylum-seekers on the island was “contrary to their constitutional right of personal liberty” and the country’s prime minister ordered it to close.
One of the solicitors acting for the asylum-seekers, Matthew Byrnes, added that there was an urgent need for an inquiry, or royal commission, into the Manus island facility.
In recent days two refugees on the remote Pacific island of Nauru — a Somali woman, 21, and an Iranian man, 23, — set themselves on fire. The man suffered severe burns and died in an Australian hospital, while the young woman remained in critical condition.
The asylum-seekers’ lawyers said they were also seeking court orders to prevent the men on Manus being transferred to Nauru.
Australia’s asylum-seeker policy has been heavily criticised internationally, including by the United Nations, and in October Nauru’s Regional Processing Centre was converted into an “open centre”, giving its inhabitants freedom of movement.
More than 150 people turned out for a candlelight vigil for those who self-harmed on Nauru in central Sydney on Wednesday, calling for the detainees in offshore camps to be brought to Australia.
Canberra has long defended its policy of denying asylum-seekers resettlement in the country, saying it has prevented deaths at sea and secured the nation’s borders.
Under the previous Labor government, at least 1,200 people died trying to reach Australia by boat between 2008 and 2013.
