{"id":8765,"date":"2017-11-08T00:38:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T05:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=8765"},"modified":"2017-11-08T00:38:14","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T05:38:14","slug":"manus-refugee-who-reached-canada-last-week-says-deaths-are-very-likely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/8765\/","title":{"rendered":"Manus refugee who reached #Canada last week says deaths are &#8216;very likely&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>Amir Taghinia flew to British Columbia last week, thanks to a group of private sponsors, after nearly four years on Manus<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A refugee who was detained on Manus Island has left to begin a new life in Canada, through a group of private citizens who sponsored his freedom.<\/p>\n<p>Amir Taghinia, a refugee from Iran, flew to Coquitlam, British Columbia last week, after nearly four years on Manus Island.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be honest, I cannot believe I am in Canada, I am so thankful,\u201d Taghinia told the Guardian. \u201cBut I cannot forget about my friends, they are starving, they have no water to drink. It is very, very likely we will have more deaths in the next coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Taghinia said he was overwhelmingly grateful to the Canadians who had worked together to find him a path to freedom. He is living at the house of Wayne and Linda Taylor after their daughter, Chelsea, met him in 2015 while she was administering immunisations to Manus Island detainees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really respect these people, I now consider them as part of my family. I am seeing the generosity Canadians have towards human beings. But look what is happening to Australia: Australia\u2019s reputation is being ruined by what the Australian government is doing to people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere, when people hear I am a refugee they are so happy to help me, to assist me in any way they can. On Manus Island, the Australian guards, they hate me because I am a refugee They call me by my boat number \u2013 EDE039. But here they call me my name, they respect me as a human being. I am glad to call myself Canadian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The realisation of a private sponsorship from Canada, from a group of a dozen residents in Coquitlam, comes as the stand-off on Manus Island worsens and the men still inside the centre run out of food and water.<\/p>\n<div id=\"dfp-ad--inline1\" class=\"js-ad-slot ad-slot ad-slot--inline ad-slot--inline1 u-h ad-slot--rendered\" data-link-name=\"ad slot inline1\" data-name=\"inline1\" data-mobile=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|fluid\" data-desktop=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|620,1|620,350|fluid\" data-google-query-id=\"CMPz--eertcCFVKOaQod8xkIQw\"><\/div>\n<p>Australia has again rejected New Zealand\u2019s standing offer to accept 150 refugees from its offshore detention islands, and progress on the vaunted US resettlement deal, which has taken 54 refugees so far, has ground to a near standstill.<\/p>\n<p>Taghinia was formally recognised as a refugee on Manus Island: that is, authorities judged he had a \u201cwell-founded fear of persecution\u201d in Iran and could not legally be returned there. \u201cI was hostage there,\u201d he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. \u201cIf the Canadian government and my sponsors weren\u2019t there, I may have died on this island.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Taghinia was outspoken in his criticism of conditions in the Australian-run detention centre during his time on the island.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-rich-link element-rich-link--tag element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded\" data-component=\"rich-link-tag\" data-link-name=\"rich-link-tag\">\n<div class=\"rich-link tone-news--item \"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI couldn\u2019t sit silent,\u201d he told CBC. \u201cThe [camp administration] intelligence report, they called me the agitator of the centre and a trouble-maker. I was not making any trouble. I was just defending human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more than 30 years, private sponsorship of refugees \u2013 by families, private citizens, religious, and community groups \u2013 has been a feature of Canada\u2019s refugee resettlement effort. Refugees who are privately sponsored are in addition to those resettled by the government.<\/p>\n<p>Since the late 1970s, more than 280,000 have been resettled in Canada by private sponsors, who commit the equivalent of one year of social security \u2013 about $30,000 \u2013 in cash or by in-kind commitment of housing, clothing, furniture and food, to assist a refugee family of five to settle into the country.<\/p>\n<p>Australia has a pilot private resettlement program, with up to 1,000 places this year. But the cost is prohibitively high \u2013 up to $55,000 for a family of five, to which the government plans to add an \u201cassurance of support\u201d of $30,000 to $60,000 \u2013 and each refugee resettled privately is offset against the number resettled through the government\u2019s program.<\/p>\n<p>There have been calls from Liberal, National, and Labor parliamentarians to boost Australia\u2019s private sponsorship program to as high as 10,000 annually.<\/p>\n<div id=\"dfp-ad--inline2\" class=\"js-ad-slot ad-slot ad-slot--inline ad-slot--offset-right ad-slot--inline2 ad-slot--rendered\" data-link-name=\"ad slot inline2\" data-name=\"inline2\" data-mobile=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|fluid\" data-desktop=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|620,1|620,350|fluid|300,600\" data-google-query-id=\"CPCju6OfrtcCFQObaQodRlkAAA\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI will be relieved when every single person on Manus and Nauru are in a safe place. Australia has completely withdrawn from the centre, they have dumped these people there in the hands of nobody,\u201d Taghinia said.<\/p>\n<p>Tim O\u2019Connor from the Refugee Council of Australia said the Australian government was threatening the lives of hundreds of innocent people through its inaction, while governments and communities elsewhere in the world were \u201cbending over backwards to provide solutions\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Australian prime minister is saying: \u2018We don\u2019t want these refugees, but you can\u2019t have them either,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an absolutely bizarre situation Prime Minister Turnbull has got himself into. New Zealand is prepared to take Australia\u2019s refugees from Manus, caring members of the Australian community are putting their hand up, even people in Canada have gone to great lengths to ensure they safety of people whose lives are in jeopardy. Prime Minister Turnbull should be putting human lives in front of short-term political point-scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Taghinia restarts his life after four years in offshore detention, the refugees and asylum seekers who remain in the Manus Island detention centre are continuing to defy instructions to leave, saying they are not safe in the Manusian community, and that they have been abandoned by the Australian government \u2013 which has legal responsibility for them. Tensions between the transplanted refugee and asylum seeker population and local Manusians have been growing over recent months, as evidenced by a series of violent incidents.<\/p>\n<p>Many Manusians in the conservative, familial Lorengau community are sympathetic towards the refugees\u2019 situation, but argue there are not the resources or space in the small town, built on close-knit clanship links, to support a new community.<\/p>\n<p>The 600 men still in the detention centre are living without electricity, running water, and dwindling supplies of food and medicine. The detention centre sits within a military base. Civilians, having briefly had access, have been banned from visiting because, it is believed, they will bring in food and medicine.<\/p>\n<p>A small amount of food was brought into the centre Monday night, the Guardian has been told. But navy personnel are blocking access to the detention centre from outside and preventing food being brought in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are in a critical situation,\u201d refugee Behrouz Boochani told the Guardian from inside the centre. \u201cStarvation is the reality of the Manus camp and for hundreds of people, their bodies are getting weak. We have been deprived from having access to food on the past six days \u2013 we have saved a little bit of food to survive. We rationed a little food the past week and now that I\u2019m writing, there is no food here. Police and navy have been ordered to prevent food into the prison camp. We no have access to food.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"dfp-ad--inline3\" class=\"js-ad-slot ad-slot ad-slot--inline ad-slot--offset-right ad-slot--inline3 ad-slot--rendered\" data-link-name=\"ad slot inline3\" data-name=\"inline3\" data-mobile=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|fluid\" data-desktop=\"1,1|2,2|300,250|620,1|620,350|fluid|300,600\" data-google-query-id=\"CP3vvrKfrtcCFYsvaQodkcIGPg\"><\/div>\n<p>The UN has urged Australia to feed and protect the men, describing the situation as an \u201cunfolding humanitarian emergency\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe call on the Australian government \u2026 who interned the men in the first place, to immediately provide protection, food, water and other basic services,\u201d said Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights.<\/p>\n<p>But PNG authorities are urging the men to abandon their protest and accept temporary resettlement elsewhere on the island.<\/p>\n<p>Petrus Thomas, the PNG minister for immigration and border security, said the detention centre site at Lombrum had been decommissioned, and services could not be restored there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll necessary equipment and structures for the provision of services have been removed and it is no longer possible to restore any services. Decommissioning activities have been extensive. The absence of services should not come as a surprise to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thomas said the PNG government was trying to work cooperatively with refugees and non-refugees to ensure they had access to necessary services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose observers including international organisations who claim to have the interests of the refugees and non-refugees, I implore you to desist from influencing the residents to remain at Lombrum \u2026 and to encourage these individuals to avail themselves of the new facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is a growing sense in PNG that the refugees and asylum seekers have been abandoned by Australia, and left for PNG to deal with. The PNG government warned last week that those held on the island remained Australia\u2019s legal and financial responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>PNG lawyer Ben Lomai, and Australian barrister Greg Barns have launched a supreme court action seeking orders that essential services be immediately restored to the detention centre to protect the former detainees\u2019 constitutionally-guaranteed human rights. The supreme court last year ruled the Manus detention was \u201cillegal and unconstitutional\u201d.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-rich-link element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded\" data-component=\"rich-link\" data-link-name=\"rich-link-2 | 2\">\n<div class=\"rich-link tone-comment--item \"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Elaine Pearson, the Australian director of Human Rights Watch, said the safety of refugees and asylum seekers could not be assured in the Lorengau, to where they are being encouraged to move.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRefugees and asylum seekers have been repeatedly robbed and assaulted in Lorengau town, with little action taken by police. There has been an escalation in violent assaults in recent months, three attacks since June required medical evacuations to Port Moresby or Australia due to inadequate medical care on the island.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRefugees and asylum seekers don\u2019t need a transfer to a different facility on Manus where they will remain vulnerable to violence. They need a lasting solution, and it\u2019s up to Australia to provide that for them without delay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Amir Taghinia flew to British Columbia last week, thanks to a group of private sponsors, after nearly four years on Manus A refugee who was <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/8765\/\" title=\"Manus refugee who reached #Canada last week says deaths are &#8216;very likely&#8217;\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8767,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765\/revisions\/8767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}