Australian government accused of ignoring gross human rights violation in Papua New Guinea
The Malcolm Turnbull government has been accused of allowing large scale human rights abuses in Papua New Guinea to retain its hold over the Manus island detention centre. An officer deployed in PNG’s largest city, Lae, informed about the horrific crimes committed by the Royal PNG Constabulary and that his superiors did not pay any heed to his reports.
"The RPNGC were essentially murdering people, raping people, burning villages down," the ABC quoted the AFP officer, who wished to remain anonymous, as saying. "No-one expected to see that."
The Australian Federal Police deployed in PNG is supposed to improve the standards of the justice system there. But according to the official, who was deployed in PNG between December 2013 and July 2014, gross violation of human rights and an unprecedented scale of corruption prevail on the island. He said that the Australian government has turned a blind eye to the extra-judicial killings and other malpractices including rape and burning of villages by the Royal PNG Constabulary.
"What we soon noticed was that anything that painted the government of PNG with corruption, or the RPNGC with their brutality, murder and rape, was being sanitised," he said.
The AFP has posted 73 officers in PNG in an advisory role and it has said in a statement that the current conditions have rendered the officers’ work there even more challenging. The AFP does not have any police power or legal protection that would enable their officers to take action in PNG. The AFP also said that the reports submitted by its officials have been reviewed and there was nothing in it that required immediate action.
It added that the Australian taxpayer money is being used to fund the corrupt PNG government groups through the Department of Foreign Affairs aid programs. According to the witness, the taskforce used Australian-funded bulldozers to flatten an entire village, displacing and killing the villagers.
Griffith University corruption and money laundering researcher Professor Jason Sharman said that one of the reasons the Australian government is ignoring the corruptions on the island is because the proceeds from it could be coming into Australia.
"I think that there's criminal money from Papua New Guinea that the Australian government knows about," Professor Sharman said. "The Australian government is choosing not to take action and one of the main reasons for that is the Manus Island deal."
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