A group of asylum seekers brought to Australia for medical care are being shunted around the country without any explanation from the federal government, supporters say.
A group of 17 men who spent more than a year in detention at a Brisbane hotel were abruptly moved on Friday to an immigration centre.
Supporters say they were then taken to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation but before dawn on Monday were bussed to the airport and flown to Melbourne.
Protests erupted as 17 asylum seekers brought to Australia for medical care have been moved
The men spent over a year at a Brisbane hotel before being moved on to immigration centre
Brisbane, Australia
– In the early hours of the morning, security guards at an inner-city motel and serviced apartment complex in Brisbane would begin knocking on each door. They were conducting a headcount, checking that everyone was still inside their room, and still alive, just as they had every day since the start of 2019.
This was Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Central Hotel & Apartments, a makeshift immigration detention centre which the Australian government terms “an alternative place of detention” (APOD).
Until this week, it had been used to confine people like 32-year-old Iraqi Ahmad Albardan and other refugees and asylum seekers who were detained at either of Australia’s offshore processing facilities – Nauru and Manus Island, both around 4,000km from Australia’s shores – but had been sent to Australia for medical treatment under the country’s now repealed medevac law.
Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition, said there were dramatic scenes as two mini-vans took medevac detainees from the hotel to the Brisbane immigration detention centre.
He said police smashed a car window and forced activists from a car that had tried to block the vans’ paths.
Queensland police did not comment whether car windows were smashed but confirmed to Guardian Australia that a woman was issued an infringement notice for “obstructing police and a number of traffic offences”.
“Approximately 50 protesters demanding the immediate release of the detainees attempted to block the passage of the buses carrying the detainees to another centre,” a spokesman for the police said.
The federal government has in recent months released many asylum seekers brought to Australia for medical care under the now-repealed medevac laws. We don t want any more transfers between detention centres. Everyone should be released, he said in a statement on Friday.
An Australian Border Force spokesperson told SBS News it does not comment on operational matters. Decisions about the most appropriate immigration detention accommodation are determined on a case-by-case basis, and involve consideration of the medical needs; and the safety and security of detainees, service providers, visitors and staff, it said in a statement.
Queensland Police has been contacted for comment.
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