Australia Negotiating With Philippines Over Refugee Resettlement Deal

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said both countries had yet to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

He said the centre was effectively controlled on the ground by Australia as the major contractors were paid by Australia, not Nauru.

Pamela Curr, the detention and refugee rights advocate at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, has never observed anything like it before – every week, the longstanding campaigner hears of another catastrophic sexual assault on young refugee women on the island.

The case has been brought on behalf of a pregnant Bangladeshi asylum seeker, who was brought to Australia from Nauru because of serious health complications and is now being forcibly returned with her infant child.

According to a news report by the broadsheet The Australian, Bishop received assurance from her counterpart in the Philippines that the deal to transfer asylum seekers being held indefinitely in controversial detention centers on remote, impoverished islands will succeed.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has stressed people placed in offshore detention will not be able to relocate to Australia permanently under any circumstances.

A Nauru official told the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that 400 claims would be processed by Sunday.

“There hasn’t been a case where the doctors have said to me that this person needs to come to Australia for medical assistance and we haven’t provided that support”, he said.

“I think what Australia doesn’t know at this stage is the systematic day-to-day inhumanities and abuses that are happening to most if not all of the asylum seekers”, she said.

The Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre’s David Manne says it is irresponsible for Australia to consider resettling anyone in the Philippines.

In an unexpected move on Monday, October 5 – just two days before the high court hearing – Nauru said it would be opening its gates to allow all 600 asylum seekers held there to roam free on the island. Asked about the security risk in the Philippines, where there is a high threat of kidnappings, terrorist attacks and violent crime, Mr Dutton said resettlement was voluntary.

In early October, a report by the global Detention Coalition in Geneva revealed that the Australian government spends $2.3 billion on migration detention centers annually, twice that of Europe and the United States.

“This is the standard of care we believe essential for women resident in Australia; it should also be provided for women supposedly under the protection of Australia”.

Since then, the government has agreed to accept 12,000 refugees from the conflict in Iraq and Syria, but maintains those from Syria on Manus and Nauru will still not be settled in Australia.

It also announced it would process all outstanding refugee claims within a week, but later clarified the pledge did not apply to those who were now outside Nauru, or their families.