Iranian asylum seeker and aspiring architect Reza Berati was beaten to death inside the Manus Island detention camp more than two months ago, during what former employees of the detention centre described as “inevitable bloodshed”.
Now, the five witnesses who say they can identify those who allegedly kicked, punched and beat the 23-year-old until he succumbed to massive head injuries, have been receiving death threats from local security guards.
Their lawyers have filed urgent requests to the High Court to have the witnesses placed in protective custody in Australia, saying they are “gravely concerned” about the men's safety. But the refugees remain in the Manus camp and are afraid to speak to PNG police. All five were seriously injured during the violence as well. One was shot in the buttock while running away and beaten again. Another was held down and slashed across the throat.
Yet this has not been the first challenge PNG police have encountered while investigating the alleged murder. Lawyer Ruth Hudson said previous attempts by police to get access to the witnesses have been “routinely thwarted” by staff. G4S guards, both Australians and locals, have refused to cooperate with local investigations.
Two Australians also emerged as suspects in the death, but have since returned to Australia. Requests to have them extradited to PNG have been ignored. The Australian Federal Police have been speaking to the guards, but have also neglected to cooperate with the local investigations.
Of the five official inquiries into conditions in the Manus Island camp and the human rights of the asylum seekers, two that were being headed up by Justice David Cannings were stonewalled in PNG's domestic courts — with Australian backing. Jay Williams, the barrister who obtained the original affidavits detailing the brutal assault on Berati, was forcibly deported from Manus Island in March.
But more allegations keep coming. The Australian Senate inquiry into the violence has received a submission from whistleblower Liz Thompson, who was working as a migration agent for the immigration department when the violence occurred.
The submission included more witness accounts that said Berati and others were beaten with a baseball bat, and named a Salvation Army worker, “Joshua”, as its carrier. A postmortem assessment of Berati's body in February suggested he had suffered injuries caused by “a heavy [piece of] timber or wood or some such object”.
Thompson wrote in the submission that the violence was ultimately the design of the Australian government: “It is my belief that DIBP [Department of Immigration and Border Protection] manufactured an atmosphere of extreme hostility, suspicion and tension through its actions in the weeks leading up to February 16th and displayed utter disregard for the welfare of injured and traumatised asylum seekers and frontline staff such as interpreters in the immediate aftermath.”
Asylum seekers said in a petition to Prime Minister Tony Abbott that they have been “under military attack that caused us to lose one of our friends forever after more than seven months of suffering from continuous pressure and humiliation in this prison”. The petition requests that they be sent to Indonesia.
The lawyers of the five murder witnesses have also submitted a separate habeas corpus writ on behalf of more than 350 detainees on Manus Island that alleges human rights violations and international crimes against humanity by the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments, and immigration minister Scott Morrison.
Former employees of the Manus detention camp told ABC's Four Corners they knew a violent outbreak was inevitable. Steve Kilburn said: “I'd say that within a week of arriving on Manus Island I formed the opinion … that there is only one possible outcome here, and that is bloodshed …
“We couldn't guarantee the safety of those people, and we still can't.”
Another witness told the program: “The reality is that if somebody from outside wants to come in and do harm to those people, there's not a lot we can do to stop it, especially if they're armed, or en masse.”
Four Corners reporter Geoff Thompson said there were three “pressure points” in the centre: the different ethnicities of asylum seekers forced to live in cramped, stressful conditions; the presence of PNG locals living near the fences of the centre; and the uncertainty faced by the asylum seekers.
Indeed, the peaceful protests within the centre's compound began after a meeting revealed to asylum seekers that PNG had no plan to resettle them as refugees. They faced repatriation to their home countries, or a life sentence in detention.
If charges are ever laid against anyone for the terrifying bloodshed that took place in the Australian-run detention centre, it will be in spite of Australia's apparent wish to sweep it under the rug.
Morrison's admission to Four Corners that, despite his “aspiration”, the Australian government cannot actually ensure the safety of asylum seekers sent to the offshore detention centres shows that even the violent murder of someone who only asked for a safer and better life is no impetus to reverse this appalling regime.
In fact, the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres are being expanded as six onshore detention centres are being closed. The expected closures of the Northern immigration detention centre, the Darwin Airport Lodge, Inverbrackie in South Australia,
Curtin detention centre in Western Australia and two sites on Christmas Island would apparently save $280 million.
Small change compared with the more than $1 billion contract Transfield holds to run the offshore nightmare camps.
