SYDNEY: Buildings were torched as hundreds of asylum-seekers escaped detention during riots at an Australian refugee facility on Nauru, witnesses said Saturday, following the launch of a hard-line immigration crackdown.
Australia announced on Friday that boatpeople will no longer be resettled in the country and all future unauthorized arrivals will be sent to poverty-stricken Papua New Guinea for permanent resettlement.
The riots on Friday night saw detainees take control of the immigration processing center on the remote Pacific island of Nauru and arm themselves with knives and steel bars.
Nearly half of the facility’s 500 asylum-seekers escaped and a number of buildings were set alight.
They abandoned the four-hour protest after a huge group of locals descended on the center armed with pipes and machetes to help authorities contain the violence in response to a government call for assistance, he added.
David Adeang, acting president of the Micronesian nation with a population of just 9,400, issued an emergency decree granting private security forces and others police powers to respond to the riots.
As of midnight on Friday Australia’s immigration department said all detainees had been accounted for.
“Plastic water tanks near burned out buildings melted like butter. I can see one building with its entire roof caved in,” said Deidenang, estimating that 95 percent of the center’s buildings had been razed.
“I can see workers in orange shirt going through the war zone-like wreckage of burned and twisted tin houses. Destructive site,” he wrote on Twitter.
A spokeswoman for Australia’s immigration department confirmed there had been “non-compliant behavior” at the Nauru facility overnight involving about 150 detainees.
“Private contractor Wilson Security and the Nauruan police were engaged and they assisted with a response to the incident,” she told AFP.
“The center is actually now calm. We are still assessing the extent of the damage, all we know is that there is damage to property.”
She could not confirm exactly how many detainees had escaped from the facility but said “all staff and transferees have now been accounted for.”
According to Australian media reports, which could not be confirmed by immigration, 15 guards were injured and about 60 detainees were arrested.
“Today was history. The biggest riot ever to be staged on Nauru soil. The most violence I’ve seen. Amazing support from locals to the police,” he said.
The Nauru center is part of Canberra’s punitive Pacific detention policy for asylum-seekers who pay people-smugglers for passage to Australia, with a second such facility on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Riots rock Australian refugee camp on Nauru
