PORT MORESBY (Pacific Media Watch / The Age / Channel Seven / Sydney Morning Herald): New video footage obtained by the Australian media indicates that the riot at the Manus Island deportation centre in February this year was prompted by a chaotic meeting with Papua New Guinean immigration staff just two hours earlier.
The video footage purportedly shows that the meeting "descended into combative chaos between asylum seekers and security officials" after PNG government staff repeatedly told the asylum seekers that they would be detained for a very long time.
The video also shows PNG immigration official Jeffrey Kiangali telling asylum seekers that government decisions on their applications for refugee status would also be influenced by their "behaviour and conduct at this centre", and leading asylum seekers to believe they would have to wait in detention for up to four years for their applications to be processed.
A report into the riot, which saw Iranian architect Reza Barati killed, who was also an asylum seeker, was released this week.
The political editor of The Age, Michael Gordon, described the report as "wishy-washy", "tiptoes around the main failures of the Abbott government and avoids a conclusion on whether the policy of indefinite detention in such a remote location is fatally flawed".
And today's editorial in The Age newspaper says the Australian government must take responsibility.
"Australia's noble ideals of justice, liberty and equity are eroded every day these offshore detention centres exist".
According to The Age, senior government ministers from Australia and Papua New Guinea knew "for weeks, if not considerably longer" exactly who killed Reza Barati. Yet the investigation into Barati's killing and the riot in the Australian deportation centre was still moving at a "slow pace".
"After all, there is nothing normal or reasonable about Australia's perverted policy on asylum seekers, which focuses on banishment, not refuge, just as there was nothing normal or reasonable about the way PNG police and others attacked asylum seekers in the Manus Island detention centre.
"The prospect of justice prevailing for Iranian Reza Barati, who was killed after being brutally bashed, repeatedly kicked and then had a heavy rock dropped on his head, and for the many other asylum seekers who were recklessly assaulted, is still only a hope," the editorial said.
In response to the report, Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison pinned the blame on asylum seekers, saying that if they had not begun rioting, Barati would still be alive.
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