PNG police evict asylum-seekers from camp

SYDNEY: Papua New Guinean police cleared the remaining asylum-seekers from a shuttered Australian-run detention complex on Friday, ending a three-week protest which started with some 600 people surviving on rain water and smuggled food and supplies.
Australia closed the Manus Island detention centre on Oct.31, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court, but the asylum seekers refused to leave to transit centres saying they feared for their safety.
Despite the unsanitary conditions and lack of adequate food and fresh water, about 300 remained when Papua New Guinea police started removing people on Thursday and Friday. "The refugees are leaving the prison camp," Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani told Reuters in a text message on Friday.
"We did our best to send out our voice but the government does not care. "Australia´s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement on Friday that all of the asylum seekers had now departed for alternative accommodation.
"Advocates should now desist from holding out false hope to these men that they will ever be brought to Australia," Dutton said. In Geneva, the UN refugee agency UNHCR denounced the use of force by Papua New Guinean police to remove the refugees and asylum seekers and called for Australia to ensure their protection.