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PNG rules controversial Australian off-shore detention center unconstitutional

Xinhua, April 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

Australian and Papua New Guinean authorities must now take immediate steps to close the controversial Manus Island detention center after the PNG Supreme Court ruled the detention of asylum seekers was unconstitutional.

The full bench of the PNG Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the detention of asylum seekers at the Australian-run Manus Island detention center breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution, Australia's national broadcaster reported.

As such, both refugees and asylum seekers at the controversial immigration detention and processing center are being detained illegally because their freedom of movement is curtailed, despite not committing a crime against PNG.

Authorities must immediately take steps to end the detention of asylum seekers, the court ruled, according to the ABC.

Though the number of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia pales in comparison to those arriving into Europe, the pacific nation hosts one of two Australian offshore immigration processing centers designed to stop the flow of asylum seekers travelling to the Australian mainland by boat via people smugglers following a spate of tragic deaths at sea. The other center on the pacific island of Nauru.

Australian authorities stressed that asylum seekers arriving by boat will not be resettled in Australia.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul told Xinhua while it's perfectly within Australian law for the detainees to be transferred to Australia's other off-shore processing center on Nauru, it would be both practically and morally impossible to do so.

"It's beyond even the basic instincts of the (ruling) government to send people that they've already put through years of hell on Manus Island to send to Nauru," Rintoul said.

Instead, the asylum seekers will most likely be brought to Australia as their transfer to PNG was deemed illegal, Rintoul said.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, in an address to Australia's National Press Club in early March, said he hoped to see the closure of the center as it had damaged his nation's reputation.

"At some stage of course we need to close the center, these people cannot remain on Manus forever," O'Neill said, adding the struggling pacific nation can ill-afford the cost of refugee resettlement. Endit