|
 Iran's foreign ministry said the dead man was an Iranian citizen
and called for an investigation into the clash, state news agency
IRNA said on Wednesday.
The facility, part of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's tough
stance against asylum seekers, has come under fire over human rights
concerns.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the riot began when
detainees forced their way out of the center, but refugee advocates
said it was triggered when Manus Island residents and police stormed
the facility, attacking the asylum seekers.
One person among the wounded was in a critical condition with a head
injury and another sustained gunshot wounds during the clashes on
the small island in impoverished Papua New Guinea.
Australia uses detention centers at Manus Island and another on the
tiny Pacific island of Nauru to process would-be refugees sent there
after trying to get to Australia, often in unsafe boats after paying
people smugglers in Indonesia.
"Our sympathies are extended to the transferees — that person's
family and friends who would have been in the facility as well,"
Morrison said in reference to the dead asylum seeker.
"If people choose to remove themselves from that center, then they're
obviously putting themselves at much greater risk and in an
environment where there is violent behavior," he told reporters in
the northern Australian city of Darwin.
IRNA said the director general of Iran's foreign ministry for
consular affairs, Seyyed Hossein Mir-Fakhar, expressed "protest and
discontent towards the practice of violence and mistreatment" in a
meeting with the Australian ambassador to Iran on Tuesday.
The incident followed an attempted breakout from the facility on
Sunday night, when 35 asylum seekers briefly escaped. Nineteen were
injured and eight arrested.
Refugee advocates said detainees and staff had told them the
violence started again when police and Manus Island villagers
stormed the facility after dark and began attacking detainees.
"Locals armed with machetes, pipes, sticks and stones have bashed
and cut asylum seekers. One asylum seeker has been thrown from the
second floor of a building; others have suffered machete cuts," the
Refugee Action Committee said in a statement.
CALLS FOR CLOSURE
The Sydney Morning Herald said it had spoken to a man whose brother
was in the facility. Ghulam Murtaza told the paper he had received a
phone call from his brother late on Monday saying villagers had come
inside the compound threatening to kill them.
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Britain's G4S, the world's biggest security group, which is
responsible for security at the facility, said: "A number of
transferees were injured after they breached the perimeter fence and
the matter became a law enforcement issue for PNG authorities."
"Claims that the transferees breached the fence following internal
attacks on them by local residents are unfounded," it said.
The firm, which employs over 620,000 people in some 120 countries,
added that its staff were able to restore order within the center
without the use of force.
G4S has had a chequered time of late. In 2012 it failed to provide
enough staff for the London Olympics, and has since been involved in
problems with an electronic tagging contract in Britain and unrest
at prisons it has run in South Africa and Britain.
Canberra's tough stance on asylum seekers, including offshore
processing and a blanket ban on people arriving by boat ever
settling in Australia, has been criticized by the United Nations and
other groups as illegal and inhumane.
Refugee advocates say that long-term detention, combined with a lack
of clarity on where and when the asylum seekers may be resettled,
contribute to a host of mental health problems at the facilities.
Last month, detainees at a center in the remote Australian territory
of Christmas Island sewed their lips together as part of a hunger
strike in protest over their treatment.
The unrest in Papua New Guinea quickly drew calls from critics to
shut the facility. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had
already said in a November report it failed to provide "safe and
humane conditions of treatment in detention".
(Additional reporting by Neil Maidment in London and Michelle
Moghtader in Dubai; editing by Paul Tait and Alison Williams)
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