PNG's Supreme Court halts asylum seeker deportations
Papua New Guinea's highest court has temporarily stopped the deportation of asylum seekers from the Australian detention centre on Manus Island.
Transcript
Papua New Guinea's highest court has temporarily stopped the deportation of asylum seekers from the Australian detention centre on Manus Island.
The Supreme Court issued the temporary injunction late on Tuesday night after two Iranians whose bid for refugee status had been rejected were forcibly removed from the country last week.
The lawyer representing more than 300 asylum seekers, Ben Lomai, says at least three others also face imminent deportation after their applications were rejected.
Mr Lomai told Jamie Tahana the asylum seekers he is representing are challenging the constitutionality of their detention, and shouldn't be deported while their case is before the courts.
BEN LOMAI: There was some evidence that some of the applicants, asylum-seekers were imminently, was about to be sent or sent back to their home countries or about to be deported because they had double negatives in their refugee status determinations. When that information came in I decided that we should put an injunction out to stop the Chief Migration Officer, Immigration Minister and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea to deport those people back to their countries of origin Prior to that there were two of the asylum-seekers that were deported and they are now back in their countries of origin. I looked at that and the possibility of trying to stop the deportation. The court was able to give us a temporary reprieve. That means the court gave us an interim injunction so that we can be able to get some evidence of who is in imminent danger of deportation so that the court can issue or grant injunction on the basis of individual applicants before the court. I have got some evidence that has been emailed over to me, we will use that. There were a few of those that have already applied to stop deportation who have given me notices of removal by the Immigration Minister. We must prove that they've got notice of removal by the Immigration Minister.
JT: How easy has it been to get this information? Has it been forthcoming to get the information about the notices of removal?
BL: Yes what happens is that when they are about to remove them they give them certain notices. One includes notice of removal. There are others telling them that their applications have been unsuccessful and they are no longer required to live within the jurisdiction and therefore your stay within the jurisdiction is illegal and therefore the minister will then have the powers to remove them. Also they give the notices of how to go about, if one does not have to, one of which is to seek the advice of lawyers but they did not give them that opportunity. They give them the notice within a week or so and then they remove them the very next day.
JT: These people have not had the opportunity to get lawyers?
BL: No. One of our arguments was that after the refugee status determination process the decision of the minister is final and so they couldn't possibly review the decision of the minister. That is in breach of their rights because they have their constitutional rights in the PNG constitution to review the decision, the administrative decision of the Immigration Minister but that right has not been accorded to them if they feel their process was unfair.
JT: Can we just get this exactly clear? These asylum-seekers' constitutional rights, in your view, have been breached because they have not been allowed to have access to a lawyer?
BL: Absolutely. Particularly in the process of the refugee status determination and the PNG Migration Regulation Act allows and provides that the Immigration Minister's decision is final. We say that is unconstitutional because section 59 of the constitution provides that the rules of natural justice must apply to everybody. That means you must be given the opportunity to review the decision of administrative tribunals or administrative authorities.
JT: So back to the case in the Supreme Court, how many people do we know of that are facing imminent removal from Manus?
BL: There are about two or three that just came in that just received a notice of removal.
JT: The injunction on deportations finishes tomorrow, what are you hoping to achieve when it gets back in court tomorrow?
BL: We will argue that there has to be a permanent injunction on those that have already been served of a notice of deportation or removal. As and when the others are served of those notices then we can run back to court and ask for an injunction to stop. That's going to be a rigourous exercise and a very expensive exercise. I put to that court that all the asylum-seekers, 300 of which are already a part of the court and they already filed proceedings in court to enforce their constitutional rights. One of the rights to enforce was that they've been transferred to Manus Island against their will. That is a right under section 42. You can't remove somebody against their will if he doesn't want to go to a certain place and detain him. That's been part of the substantive constitutional enforcement that we're seeking under section 57 of the constitution and we are saying they have a case to be heard here and they should not be deported to their countries of origin.
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