As the UK government continues its push to forcibly remove asylum seekers to Rwanda, a group of Rwandan nationals has claimed asylum in Australia after arriving by boat on a remote island.
The five men arrived in Australia by an unconventional route, reportedly flying into the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to be granted visas on arrival, before travelling thousands of kilometres east to Indonesia’s Papua province, where they crossed the land border it shares with Papua New Guinea (PNG).
From PNG’s western province they took a dinghy to Saibai Island, one of Australia’s northernmost points: the tiny, low-level island is just 4km from PNG’s mainland in the Torres Strait.
Travel across the strait is fluid. Papua New Guinean nationals in neighbouring coastal villages and Indigenous Australian islanders are allowed to move freely between the two countries for traditional activities, but outsiders are uncommon, and tend to be conspicuous. In 2017, six Chinese nationals were detected in the Torres strait, having travelled through PNG to Saibai Island. They were returned to China.
The five Rwandans were reported to have been found by local hunters in mangroves in an uninhabited part of Saibai, a known crocodile habitat.
The basis for the Rwandans’ asylum claim is unknown. They remain in the Torres strait, but unless PNG agrees to take them back with an undertaking they will not be returned to potential persecution they are likely to be transferred to Australia’s “offshore processing” detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru.
The UK’s government’s effort to send people from small boat arrivals to Rwanda for processing and resettlement has been promoted as directly inspired by the Australian example of offshore processing. The home secretary, James Cleverly, told parliament in December that Australia’s boat arrivals had “trended pretty much down to zero – deterrence works”.
The UK Home Office has said it does not know whether the Rwanda plan will reduce boat crossings: a departmental impact assessment says it’s a “novel and untested scheme, and it is therefore uncertain what level of deterrence impact it will have”.
Jana Favero, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne, said the UK’s adoption of its Australian-inspired policy was “cruelty for cruelty’s sake”.
“It’s incredibly ironic that at the same time the UK is rounding up people to send them to Rwanda, there are reports of Rwandans arriving on Australia’s shores seeking asylum.
“And it is deeply disturbing that the UK is knowingly copying our offshore detention policy given the overwhelming evidence it is a failed policy.”
Australia has twice implemented offshore processing regimes: the most recent iteration has been plagued by scandal and has cost upwards of A$10bn (£5.5bn). At least 12 people have died in the camps, including being murdered by guards, through medical neglect and by suicide. Psychiatrists described camp conditions as “inherently toxic” and akin to torture.
The fate of the Rwandans who have arrived in Australia is as yet unclear. They remain on Saibai Island, and efforts to return them to PNG – under an existing protocol designed to deal with irregular migration in the Torres strait – appear not to have even begun.
PNG’s chief migration officer, Wellington Navasivu, said: “PNG has yet to receive any formal communication from Australia on this matter”, while the foreign affairs minister, Justin Tkatchenko, told the Guardian it was “news to me … this is the first I am hearing about this”.
