SYDNEY (Radio New Zealand International/Herald Sun/Info Link/Pacific Media Watch): Five well known artists have pulled out of the Sydney Biennale over its refusal to drop sponsorship of Transfield Services - which runs the controversial Manus Island asylum seeker deportation centre.
Australia's Herald Sun newspaper said that artists Charlie Sofo, Gabrielle de Vietri, Libia Castro, Olafur Olafsson and Ahmet Ogut had withdrawn their work on March 5 and had "relinquished" their fees.
The biennale opens on March 21. Transfield Services is an Australian "asset management" corporation which last month won a AU$1.2bn contract to run Australia's deportation centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The artists told the Herald Sun that they had asked the biennale organisers to drop Transfield as a sponsor, but they had refused to do so.
“We see our participation in the biennale as an active link in a chain of associations that leads to the abuse of human rights. For us, this is undeniable and indefensible" the artists told the Herald Sun, adding that several other activities highlighting human rights abuses on Manus Island would happen during the biennale.
Australian architectural magazine Info Link reported that Reza Berati, an asylum seeker who was killed on Manus Island on February 17, was simply an out of work architect who had hoped to study further in his field in Australia.
Berati had been detained on Manus Island for nearly six months when he was killed after Papua New Guinean police opened fire inside the detention centre, killing Berati and injuring 77 others.
The PNG Catholic Bishops Conference has now called for the detention centre to be closed down.
The organisation's general secretary, Father Victor Roche, told Radio New Zealand International that since all asylum seekers who come to Papua New Guinea are actually trying to get to Australia, managing the asylum seekers must be done in Australia.
"We are not happy at the incident that one person - an Iranian - died in the centre and there were many people who were wounded in the detention there. So we are calling again to government's of Australia and Papua New Guinea to close it" Roche told RNZI.
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Pacific Media Watch
