Manus Island shows what will happen to asylum seekers “transferred” to Rwanda

The secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomons looks at the agreement on asylum seekers signed last week by the United Kingdom and Rwanda. Such a deal is a “ruthless exercise” that Australia implemented in 2013. For those who flee places like Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan, it “will be hell” like what happened in Oceania.

Port Moresby (AsiaNews) – The agreement on asylum seeker processing signed last week in Kigali by the United Kingdom and Rwanda is basically meant for male individuals under the age of forty arriving in England by boat from mainland Europe. It is a perfect replica of the Australian initiative of 19 July 2013 with neighbouring Papua New Guinea in Manus Island. Same purpose. Same pattern. Easy, therefore, to predict the developments and the outcomes.

Everything always starts with the frantic search for a territory or a country where a particular Western government can create a powerful structure of deterrence against new arrivals on its soil. Most of the foreign leaders being approached decline the juicy opportunity. A handful show interest. A good financial reward is inevitably involved, normally in the form of development and infrastructural projects, and most likely also through personal tips and kickbacks. In connection with the signing ceremony, it will be made clear that the generous host country will be able to resettle thousands of refugees due to its vast and untapped resources and land mass. This practice of exchanging people for financial benefits is already in itself a blatant example of human trafficking.

When the camps open, the guests won’t be described as “detainees” as one would expect, but more mildly as “transferees”. They will be given an ID card with a boat number of arrival, and they will be known by that number, not by their name. They will be kept in isolation and fed wrong information about the locals outside the camp. It took a while to the Manus refugees to realize that the neighbouring villages were not inhabited by “cannibals’’, as the white guards had told them, and for the locals to realize that the “transferees” were not terrorists.

Externalization of asylum processing claims leads migrants to a land they had never aimed at and possibly never knew about. The hope of a quick fix for their situation fast disappears as they come to realize that their future is not a real concern for their formerly coveted country of destination. England like Australia won’t bother about the bad publicity of their work with the asylum seekers. This will instead help convince a higher number of people not to come ashore and end up in hopeless conditions elsewhere in the world. The fight against people smugglers and the prevention of deaths at sea is normally mentioned to accredit the presumed goodness of this ruthless exercise.

With the sense of being indefinitely trapped in a remote and inhospitable place, young people mostly in their twenties hardly manage to control anger and frustration. That easily leads at first to rebellion and rioting. But well prepared and heavily armed security staff promptly repress any move and therefore administer physical and psychological punishment. When then it becomes clear that any action or plea is without effect, the boys turn their anger to themselves. Countless cases and horrifying pictures of self-harm during the Manus years (2013-19) are in the hands of authorities and human rights advocates. It will be the same in the Rwandan camps when cutting of skin, hitting of heads against the walls, ingestion of razor blades and other sharp instruments, even the burning of self, become at the same time a way of protest, the repression of despair, and the last desperate attempt to be evacuated on medical grounds.

Medical care in confinement is not good. Food too. Companies and personnel contracted for the camps follow instructions from the governments. Only survival is guaranteed. Good life could send out the “wrong” message and encourage new onshore arrivals. The very first goal of an offshore processing exercise is to ensure that very few settle where they had wished to, possibly none of them. In the case of the Rwanda agreement is being reported that the hosting country will properly and safely resettle all genuine refugees who are recognized as such by international standards. It’s a bluff. Nobody will accept to remain.

True that Rwanda is said to be an orderly and developing country, though run by an autocratic type of government. That may help asylum seekers who somehow adjust under a variety of circumstances. But it depends a lot on their background. Asian and African refugees greatly suffer, but more easily adjust to countries where natural environment, climate, food, people’s attitude, skin colour better resemble what they have grown up with and now left behind. For people coming from the Middle East, detention in a tropical set-up is a nightmare, an additional torturous occurrence. A good number of them have lost their mind in Manus Island. Half a dozen has died of incidents and suicide. Rwanda will be hell for Kurds of Iran and Iraq, Hazaras of Afghanistan, Ahwazis of Southern Iran; only to mention a few of the most vulnerable minorities.

Hard to imagine what level of transparency and publicity the Rwandan camps will enjoy. It will depend on their accessibility by the United Nations, Red Cross, NGOs, faith-based organizations, human rights advocates, and media. That will also determine what number of lives will be partially or permanently ruined in the name of deterrence. Right-leaning governments and sections of society, including Churches and other religious communities, do not really care and speak about that. But for those who see a person in every human being, it is just puzzling and heartbreaking.

The financial cost of asylum externalized processing is incredibly high, much more than what it would cost to permanently accommodate onshore a much larger number of genuine refugees. Still this Australian invention of the twenty-first century, now adopted and implemented by other ruthless governments, affords advantages to political parties, contractors, private companies unashamedly dipping into taxpayers’ money. It is true that disorderly and uncoordinated arrivals along any country’s shoreline present serious challenges and risks. But simply keeping vulnerable people, as a great majority of them are, at bay or packing them on flights to remote destinations is not what leaders of intelligence and good will would do to address such a humanitarian emergency.

The Manus experience has taught that most than half of the arrivals by sea are genuine refugees as per international standards. A good number of those who do not meet the requirements for refugee status cannot be returned to countries like Afghanistan and Iran; or even Pakistan or Bangladesh due to government policies on people who have left the country or dangers that individuals face. The hundreds that Papua New Guinea could allegedly resettle in 2013, as per public announcement by then Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, were down to the meagre figure of two individuals by May 2021 according to the country’s government immigration agency. Still there is no national legislation for the process to be implemented and zero political appetite for it. How differently will things be in Rwanda?

England will outdo Australia. The plan is that those taken to Rwanda will never see any other place again, while only 7 per cent (about 220) of those taken to Papua New Guinea and Nauru in 2013 still remain there, with at least half of them still expected to have a third country resettlement this year or next year. It is desirable that people in authority work for the Rwandan option to fail well before the first flight even takes off.

• rwanda
• united kingdom
• refugees
• transfer
• manus island
• australia
• human trafficking
• catholic church