Australia’s outsourced misery prison to close

We are all aware of multinational companies outsourcing their work to countries who pay a pittance to what they would have to in their own countries. Often the conditions and pay are terrible. In some cases such as the retailing manufacturing tragedy in Bangladesh, 80 workers died when the unsafe building they laboured in collapsed into a heap of rubble.

In recent years some countries have sought to outsource their penal problems to other countries, often, again where the rules of decency, humanity and human rights simply don’t apply. One thinks instantly of Guantanamo bay, the US military base, a stones throw away from Cuba, where detainers have been held for over 10 years without trail or conviction for any crime. The US always argued that those there were picked up from the ‘battle field’, wherever that was.

Australia would go one step further in their brutal outsourcing programme. Rather than abide by the rule of international law and process all individuals, not picked up on the ‘battle field’ , but seeking political asylum, they would be herded, - in this case shipped - to the island of Manus, Papua New Guinea, and imprisoned indefinitely in almost barbaric conditions.

Back in April, after the leaking of a damning report into the ‘detention camp’, the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled, that it was in breach its own constitution.

Reports of sexual violence, gangs, and gross mistreatment of the detainers by guards made up more than over 2000 incidents from the camp

Those who had been fighting the Australian Government do something about the mistreatment called the ruling a “massive victory” for the asylum seekers and refugees.

“PNG’s supreme court has recognised that detaining people who have committed no crime is wrong. For these men, their only mistake was to try to seek sanctuary in Australia – that doesn’t deserve years in limbo locked up in a remote island prison.”

Now the Papua New Guinea Government has decided to close the camp altogether, bringing this dark episode of outsourcing misery to end.

What happens now to the detainers, no one knows, but at least the world's spot light will be looking at what Australia does next.

Simon Woolley