PM Scott Morrison approved reopening Christmas Island after a legislative defeat in Parliament allowed refugees and asylum seekers detained in existing offshore centres to travel to Australia for medical treatment.
A lack of adequate healthcare services and the heavily securitised environment have resulted in the deterioration of the mental health of more than 600 men in the country's offshore detention facilities.
For the first time in 25 years, the member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) failed to make a joint statement on Sunday under the shadow of US and China trade war.
Public pressure mounts on Canberra to shift refugee children detained on the Pacific island of Nauru to New Zealand, even as PM Scott Morrison says such transfers could cause new arrivals.
Trump’s Muslim ban complicates the recently signed Australia-US refugee deal – and Australia complicates it further by denying journalists and rights activists entry to the contentious Manus Island detention centre.
The Australian government needs to be held to account for its shameful treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The government's policies fly in the face of the core values that underpin Australian society and history.
The 24-day protest by refugees on Manus Island symbolises solidarity against oppression as they demand the freedom that Australia continues to deny.
"The finding opens the way to a major compensation and also for consequential orders against both the PNG and Australian governments," says Refugee Action Coalition spokesman.
Reports have emerged of baton-wielding officials dragging refugees from their rooms towards buses bound for PNG-run transition centres elsewhere on Manus.
Australia's current policy on asylum seekers is to intercept refugees and migrants at sea, deny them entry, and process them in centres like the camp on Manus Island in neighbouring Papua New Guinea. Critics consider the process inhumane.
Refugees in the former Australia-run camp in Papua New Guinea posted photos to social media showing police entering the abandoned detention centre as fears grew that the situation could turn violent.
Authorities in Papua New Guinea say they will take steps to forcibly remove around 450 men who remain in an abandoned Australian detention centre on Manus Island.
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