Allegations of rape and torture at Australian asylum detention center

A former guard at Australia's  Manus detention in Papua   New Guinea has accused his government of ignoring physical and sexual abuse at the center.   Rod St. George who quit in made the allegations following Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's announcement that no asylum seekers will arrive in Australia but will be held in detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

    According to Mr St George, who quit his job in April, six men have been raped by fellow detainees in the tented, men-only section of the camp, while others have been forced by “heavies” – other inmates – to sew their lips together. One man allegedly had his eardrum punctured after solvent was repeatedly poured into his ear.

This isn't the first time for allegations of abuse and denial of human rights for asylum seekers to be lodged against the Australian government.   Especially its treatment of child refugees who have been held in adult detention centers with little or no protection from the other occupants.

  “I’ve never seen human beings so destitute, so helpless and so hopeless,” he said. “In Australia, the facility couldn’t even serve as a dog kennel. The owners would be jailed.” He added: “I took the position with every intention of making the place a safer environment, but it proved quite rapidly to be an impossibility… I felt ashamed to be Australian.”

Under the new plan, the Manus camp will be expanded to accommodate 3,000 people. Mr St George claimed that Immigration Centre staff running the centre had turned a blind eye to the sexual assaults, and that victims had been forced to live alongside their attackers because there was no means of separating them. “There was nothing that could be done for these young men,” he said. “They had to stay where they were.

Hardline to draconian: Australia’s immigration policy

August 2001 The Conservative Prime Minister John Howard shocks the international community by refusing to allow a Norwegian tanker carrying shipwrecked asylum-seekers to land on Christmas Island. Under his new hardline policy, all “boat people” are to be sent to Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea, and the Pacific island nation of Nauru for processing.

December 2007 The newly elected Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announces that Mr Howard’s “Pacific Solution” will be scrapped.

September 2011 Amid overcrowding on Christmas Island, Australia’s High Court rejects a plan by Mr Rudd’s successor, Julia Gillard, to send boat people to Malaysia.

August 2012 As numbers of boat people increase steeply, Ms Gillard resurrects the Pacific Solution. She says asylum-seekers will wait years to be resettled.

July 2013 Mr Rudd, back in power, announces a deal with PNG that will see all boat people sent there not only to be processed – but also to be resettled if their asylum claims are successful.