Pearls and Irritations

Pope Francis’ milestone tour from 2-13 September includes Papua New Guinea, the nation that has long hosted the largest number of refugees in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as Indonesia, the country from which those asylum seekers fled.

Nowadays, PNG is better known for its colourful dance troupes, rugby league players and World War II sites, but back in the early 1980s it was in the headlines for a different reason, the influx of thousands of Melanesian people fleeing Indonesian rule in the neighbouring province of West Papua, then known as Irian Jaya.

The great bulk of those refugees, estimated to number up to 10,000, are still in PNG today, spread out along the north-south border, living in camps that have become villages, fearful of returning to Indonesia where conflict between the military and local resistance continues to play out. Like the PNG population, they are almost universally Christian.

Jason Siwat, director of the refugee program for the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and the Solomon Islands, says, ‘The West Papuans have conflict with local landowners, so they can’t farm and consequently face food insecurity. They’re unable to pay school fees, and even suffer untreated snake bites when they move about to gather firewood or hunt for food.”

These people live far away and out of sight of the media. The latter condition also applies to dozens more West Papuans who have made it to PNG’s capital of Port Moresby where Siwat’s team has gone house to house, or more accurately shanty to shanty, documenting conditions and needs, including hygiene and nutrition shortcomings, and lack of educational and work opportunities.

They “live in one of the most unhygienic and destitute conditions that you can find anywhere in Oceania and the Pacific that host refugees”, the report for the Bishops reads.

The many privations included 21 families sharing one toilet and one tap, with people sleeping on cardboard. Foraging for recyclable cans and bottles in ditches or rubbish bins was a major earner – for AUD$2.00 per day. Many children did not attend school and most adults have only rudimentary education or skills.

The Pontiff has frequently voiced sympathy for refugee concerns, and before leaving on this trip he reaffirmed his call for safe migration pathways for people fleeing their own countries for fear of persecution, describing any refusal to harbour asylum seekers as a “grave sin”.

Saying, “Even at this moment people are crossing seas and deserts to reach a land where they can live in peace and security”, the Pope added, “migrants cannot be deterred from those deadly crossings through more restrictive laws, nor through the militarisation of borders, nor through rejections”.

He urged the expansion of “safe and legal avenues for migrants, by facilitating sanctuary for those fleeing wars, violence, persecution and many calamities; we will achieve it by fostering in every way a global governance of migration based on justice, fraternity and solidarity”.

However, it seems unlikely the pontifical party will check in on the West Papuans in Port Moresby, let alone those in the remote sites, although included on the itinerary is a stopover in the border town of Vanimo, near the site of the first refugee camp, gloomily called Blackwater.

The Pope’s first stop was Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, which now occupies an unusual place in the refugee galaxy. No longer a source of asylum seekers, Indonesia now hosts a good many people who have found their way to the country in the hope of transiting to Australia, whether by air or sea.

No sinner in the Pope’s eyes, then, Indonesia allows them to stay, rather than face mandatory return home, refoulement in UN-speak, living in cheap hotels as far as possible from the coastline where they might find people selling passages on un safe boats. They lead a sad existence, with minimal living costs paid by the UNHCR and, to an extent, by Australia, which maintains a watchful eye.

In Port Moresby, a sometimes-violent place, Pope Francis is also unlikely to encounter the 50 or so asylum seekers who were moved there from the Australian-run Manus Island detention camp in a still-secret agreement in 2021 between the then-Morrison government and its equally opaque PNG counterpart.

These people hail from a range of dangerous places, including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Iran, and have now been in PNG for more than a decade, unable to work, with insecure housing, failing health, including severe psychological disorders, seeing little hope of proper resettlement and relying on financial support from church charity groups in Australia.

In a strong letter to the Australian Government, the PNG Bishops Conference said these people “are in PNG because of an Australian policy, and not PNG’s… This is an arrangement that must never be repeated anywhere in the world, let alone in the Pacific and PNG”.

The Australian Government admitted recently that the “Independent Management Arrangement” had been “confidentially negotiated” with PNG and that disclosing the dollar value of Australia’s support could compromise PNG’s ability to manage the residual caseload. Apparently, openness about the funding would have the potential to “cause significant damage to the Australia/Papua New Guinea bilateral relationship”.

The asylum seekers’ situation has prompted numerous representations to Canberra from groups, including the Refugee Council of Australia, Australian Catholic & Migrant Refugee Office, the Catholic Alliance for People Seeking Asylum and St Vincent de Paul Society.

The key demand is for them to be offered relocation to the mainland for medical care, proper status assessment and assistance to resettle, whether in Australia or in a safe and willing third country.

St Vincent de Paul Society is also calling for an adequate safety net for all asylum seekers in Australia and a fairer process for all affected by the unjust “fast track” process, along with the holding of a Royal Commission into immigration detention, both offshore and onshore. The ALP’s 2023 national conference endorsed the holding of a parliamentary inquiry into immigration detention, but no progress has been made.

The pressures experienced by asylum seekers in the bureaucratic limbo of long-term bridging visas were highlighted by the recent public suicide in Melbourne by 23-year-old Mano Yogalingam, a Tamil from Sri Lanka.

A new report on Sri Lanka by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has highlighted “concerning trends with potentially far-reaching impact on the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms in the country”. Deaths in custody and the brutal torture of Sri Lankan Tamils in detention were among the practices described.

In response, the Refugee Council of Australia has written to the Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, Tony Burke, urging a reassessment of the protection needs of those rejected through the “fast track” process, the largest cohort being Sri Lankans Tamils.

‘There is a shift in welfare costs and responsibilities from federal to state agencies and community-based organisations, at an estimated cost of between $80 million to $120 million per year. Charities are being left to fill the gaps and it is not sustainable,”  St Vincent de Paul Society national president Mark
Gaetani adds.

The cost of Australia’s offshore detention program has reached an astronomical $12.1 billion, with the PNG deal still clouded in secrecy. Nauru is again closed to outside scrutiny, with the formerly decommissioned facility now holding around 100 people.

Pope Francis will be home before Sunday, 29 September, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, no doubt vitalised by his experiences in the countries neighbouring Australia, including Timor-Leste, once a major source of Catholic refugees due to the Indonesian occupation.

His earlier words will continue to echo: “God does not remain at a distance, no. He shares in the migrants’ drama, God is there with them, with the migrants. He suffers with them, with the migrants, he weeps and hopes with them.”

It must be hoped that the Pontiff’s plea for accepting asylum seekers as members of the global human family will be received warmly, not least by our own supposedly compassionate country.

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