A group of 14 refugees and people seeking asylum left Nauru for Australia, this morning, Friday 25 September. The plane is expected to arrive in Sydney early this afternoon. It is not known where the group will be quarantined.
This is the second flight in three weeks bringing refugees from Nauru for medical treatment. (The ten people who were transferred on 4 September are now out of quarantine but are being held in hotel-detention in Darwin.)
Although the people being transferred are being brought to Australia for medical treatment, the government seems to be deliberately denying medical treatment for those people on Nauru who had previously been approved for medical treatment under the Medevac Bill that was repealed by the Morrison government in December 2019.
Yet, the transfer is an admission that, despite persistent claims by government Ministers, there is no adequate medical treatment available on Nauru.
“For more than ten months, the government has used refugees as political pawns in their opposition to the Medevac Bill, denying them badly needed medical help,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.
“Throughout the government’s vindictive campaign against Medevac, they claimed refugees could get treatment on Nauru. Now they have brought 24 people in less than a month. But others have been left suffering offshore.”
“We are extremely concerned that the government will hold the recently transferred refugees in detention, just as they are holding the refugees transferred under the Medevac Bill in hotel-prisons for many months,” said Rintoul, “It is incredible that the law allows the government to imprison people who have been recognised as refugees by a process administered by the government itself.
“It is a clear breach of their human rights. People have declined to be transferred to Australia because they know they face indefinite detention in Australia regardless of their refugee status. All those who have been transferred from Nauru and Manus Island should be freed.”
With the two medical transfers to Australia and the ten who left Nauru for third country resettlement on 17 September, there are less than 150 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru.
“All the people on Nauru could be brought to Australia and given the medical treatment and protection they need,” said Rintoul, “The government has robbed them of their health and more than seven years of their lives.”
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713
