Flickr/Global PanoramaHundreds of refugees at an Australian immigration detention centre have reportedly requested they receive assisted suicide.
Manus Island Regional Processing Centre is currently home to around 900 asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by boat, and an estimated 600 of them have signed a letter making the tragic request.
According to The Independent refugees suggested “a navy ship that can put us all on board and dump us all in the ocean… a gas chamber… (or) an injection of a poison”.
The letter also read:
As previously we wrote and asked for help and there was no response to our request to be freed out of detention we realised that there are no differences between us and rubbish – but a bunch of slaves that helped to stop the boats by living in hellish condition.
The only difference is that we are very costly for the Australian tax payers and the politicians as our job to ‘stop the boats’ is done.
We are dying in Manus gradually, every single day we are literally tortured and traumatised and there is no safe country to offer us protection.”
The island is located off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and has come under fire in the past after it was alleged Australian authorities removed three guards accused of rape before they could be drug tested by PNG police.
Disturbing reports had previously emerged that extreme advocates of the refugees coached them to self harm, and cause other vulnerable asylum seekers to do likewise in a bid to raise the profile of their cause.
But speaking to Vice a refugee known as Mahmud took credit for the letter, making no suggestion that it was in any way a stunt.
He said:
Recently Immigration is telling us there is no country that will accept us on this planet.
They are literally torturing and traumatising us with their system (which is a planned proper system to break us down).
So when we found out they will keep doing this and we will be experiencing gradual death for the rest of our lives in here why not ask them to execute us instead?”
