Iranian refugee dies at notorious Australian camp

An Iranian refugee has been found dead in a notorious offshore Australian immigration camp on Manus Island, with fellow refugees saying officials failed to treat him despite a long history of mental illness.

Australia’s immigration department on Monday confirmed the death of Hamed Shamshiripour, 32, near the Refugee Transit Center in East Lorengau, but gave no further details.

It said Papua New Guinea officials were investigating the matter. The police said they have cordoned off the area where the man had been found hanging.

Shamshiripou had been staying at a transit center for refugees awaiting resettlement.

His death caused outrage among his fellow asylum-seekers who revealed he was the victim of mistreatment by camp authorities.

The death is the sixth to take place in an Australian offshore detention center since 2014 according to Monash University’s Australian Border Deaths Database.

Behrouz Boochani, an asylum seeker from Iran who has also been detained on Manus since 2013, revealed some of the facts regarding the situation of Shamshiripour and other refugees at Australia’s notorious ‘transit’ camps.

Shamshiripour was sent “by force to the transit center and Australia left him without any protection there and now he died. So Australia is responsible."  

Boochani, who described the detention centers as prisons, warned that the situation remained dire for the asylum-seekers at the Australian camps.  

“Hundreds of refugees are sick — they are damaged physically and mentally in this prison and Australia doesn’t care,” Boochani said.

It comes following days of protests inside the center against attempts to force the asylum seekers to move out. The asylum seekers confronted guards and police on Friday, refusing to leave the compound.

The PNG Supreme Court last year ruled that the detention of asylum seekers on Manus breached the constitution and ordered that the camp be closed.

Australia refuses to resettle any asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by boat. Instead, the country pays the Pacific nations of PNG and Nauru to hold them in detention camps.

The United Nations and human rights organizations and advocates have condemned the Australian government for their inhumane treatment of refugees.

Approximately 2,000 asylum-seekers are barred from Australia and instead sent to lawless offshore centers, where numerous criminal acts and human rights violations have been recorded and documented over the years.

The policy has drawn criticism from the United Nations and rights organizations amid a global debate on how to manage people displaced by conflict.

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