Transcript
For three months the asylum seekers have been held in the Bomana Immigration Centre, an Australian built, $US15 million annex to the most notorious prison in Port Moresby.
Their plight was not forgotten by Behrouz Boochani as he stepped off the plane in Christchurch last Friday.
While marvelling at his new found freedom, Mr Boochani took a moment to tell reporters about friends he had left behind.
"They are under too much pressure those people. Actually they punish them, because many of them refuse to claim asylum in PNG, and that's why they rejected them and they jailed them."
Mr Boochani says a grim fate could be awaiting those locked up in Bomana.
"What I know is that they deprive them to have access to phone so their families are very concerned about them. They are starving. And what I know is that they lost too much weight. There is not medication. So those people really we are concerned about them and I think if they continue to keep them there more people will die."
Mr Boochani's fears are shared by NGO Human Rights Watch.
Its Australian director Elaine Pearson says torturous conditions inside Bomana have been designed for a single purpose.
"These cruel conditions are in place to coerce men to agree to assisted voluntary return. And you know this fits a pattern that the Australian Government and PNG government have persisted with over the years, make the conditions on Manus Island so bad that people become so desperate that they want to return home."
Six asylum seekers have been released from Bomana after agreeing to return to the countries they fled. That's after they languished on Manus Island for six years from where they could have accepted repatriation.
Ms Pearson says repatriation from Bomana cannot be described as voluntary.
"We have real questions about whether that return truly is voluntary because of the conditions that they were subjected to in Bomana. And we know that people who have seen the men who've been released have described how their faces are just like bone, they've lost a lot of weight, and they seem physically and mentally damaged from their experience. So we're calling on the PNG government to take steps to ensure that they have the ability to communicate with lawyers and loved ones."
Ms Pearson says a legal challenge is imminent.
"There will be steps to challenge this detention because it is arbitrary detention. Under international law detainees have to have the right to be able to challenge their detention, as well as the right to seek access to legal representation, and the asylum seekers who've been detained in Bomana, have been detained, without any access to those rights. So I think quite clearly this is a violation of PNG law and also of international law."
Elaine Pearson says the PNG and Australian governments should work together to end the detention of asylum seekers in Bomana.
