Refugees Trapped by Australia for 5 years

A new video from Human Rights Watch highlights ongoing abuses ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Australian government’s reintroduction of its offshore processing and settlement policy. Under this policy, people seeking asylum who travel by boat are sent to remote offshore camps on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the island nation of Nauru. On July 19, 2013, then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have “no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.” Soon thereafter, Australian signed agreements to resettle people on PNG and Nauru. Since then, Australia has forcibly transferred 3,172 people, most of them refugees, to camps on those islands at a cost of more than A$5 billion (US$3.7 billion). About 1,600 remain, 750 men in PNG and 850 men, women and children on Nauru.