Calls are growing louder for Canberra to bring all refugees - who had sought asylum in Australia but were detained offshore - into the country for medical treatment and processing.
Manus-detainee-turned-author Behrouz Boochani has urged the British public to resist plans "to copy the deeply dehumanising asylum policies of Australia".
Boris Johnson’s plan to ‘offer’ migrants a ‘choice’ between returning to their war-torn countries and Rwanda mimics Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’ where people were dumped for years on islands
Britain’s plan to send migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda has left survivors of a similar scheme in Australia wondering why the “failed” policy that shattered their lives is being revived elsewhere.
For more than six years, Sudan-born refugee Abdul Aziz Muhamat was detained by Australian authorities in a small tropical island camp off Papua New Guinea’s mainland, hidden from full legal and public oversight.
“The simplest way to describe daily life on Manus Island is there’s no life,” Muhamat explained. “It’s worse than a prison. If you cry, no one will listen. If you shout, no one will come.”
Muhamat’s detention
The UK government has proposed placing electronic tags on some asylum seekers who arrive by small boat over the Channel. The pilot scheme, says the Prime Minister, will stop them from "vanishing into the rest of the country."