Australian police cut chains from immigration protesters at PM’s residence

Sydney (Reuters): Australian police on Monday used metal cutters to remove five protesters who had chained themselves to the gate of the prime minister’s official residence over the treatment of asylum seekers detained in Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea police last week expelled about 400 protesting asylum-seekers from a shuttered Australian-run detention camp on Manus Island. The United Nations decried the crackdown as “shocking”.

The Manus Island detention camp, and another in the South Pacific island nation of Nauru, have been cornerstones of Australia’s policy under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores.

The policy, aimed at deterring people from making a perilous sea voyage to Australia, has been heavily criticised by the United Nations and human rights groups but has bipartisan political support in Australia.

But some people, including some Christian groups, object to it.

Australia says allowing asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores would only encourage people smugglers in Asia and see more people risk their lives trying to reach Australia.

Australia closed the Manus Island detention centre on 31 October, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court.

The asylum-seekers, who have said they fear for their safety as well as being resettled in Papua New Guinea or another developing country, were taken to transit centres.

Australia has rejected an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 of the men, and is instead aiming to sending up to 1,250 of them to the United States under a swap deal.