PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Bishops call for refugees to be released

BY BILL SMITH

The Papua New Guinea Catholic Bishops Conference on November 6 called on the PNG government to "respect human rights and accept the need to release the refugees from detention in Manus [Island]". The bishops said that the laws of PNG do not allow people who have not broken the law to be imprisoned.

PNG foreign affairs minister Rabbie Namaliu said on November 7 that it was not within the power of the national government to release the refugees from the centre.

"The [Manus Island detention centre] is being managed on behalf of the Australian government, and while the former [PNG] government entered into an agreement for the use of the facility which our government is honouring, the decision about who leaves, and when, are outside our jurisdiction", he said.

Namaliu said that "if the bishops want to persuade the Australian government to review its policy on asylum seekers, they should make direct representations to it". General secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference, Lawrence Stephens, told the November 7 PNG Independent that the bishops in Australia had done so on their PNG colleagues' behalf.

"The [bishops are] aware of the difficult position the PNG government has been placed in. But PNG is an independent country with its laws which must be respected especially by the highest levels of our government", Stephens said.

From Green Left Weekly, November 20, 2002.

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From GLW issue 517