Manus Island detainees trade smokes, booze on black market
Taxpayers are footing a $1.5 million a week bill for meals, fishing trips, beach outings, visits to market and free packets of cigarettes for almost 900 male asylum seekers on Manus Island.
In a black market trade, detainees are selling their Australian taxpayer supplied cigarettes to locals in the town markets in exchange for money to buy marijuana, booze, smartphones and television sets.
Inside the Manus Island offshore regional processing centre in Papua New Guinea, known by locals as “little Australia”, they watch movies, are fed three meals a day, do gym sessions and take English and Tok Pisin (PNG national language) classes.
As about 150 detainees held a fourth day of protests against the “Manus Hell” of life inside the $600m facility, a News Corp investigation can reveal drug and alcohol abuse, black market activity, a cash-for-sex ....
Protest leader Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian Kurd, told how detainees are rewarded for going fishing, taking language classes, or trips to the beach with up to seven free packets of cigarettes a week.
They catch refugee shuttle buses into the main township of Lorengau where they sell the free cigarettes for $10 a packet, often more than 40 packets at a time, in the illicit trade at markets along the coconut palm-fringed shoreline.
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http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/manus-island-detainees-trade-smokes-booze-on-black-marke...
**bleep**s are nearly $40 a pack in Oz so why in hell would an alleged refugee want to come to Oz? Life for an alleged refugee on Manus Island seems to be as close to ideal as possible.
