CLOSE MANUS CLOSE NAURU
1pm Saturday 5 November, Hyde Park north
Doctors for Refugees is calling on all Australian doctors and their supporters—specifically other health professionals but also the general public—to march on November 5th to demand humane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.
Download a poster here to stick up at work or near where you live
Invite your friends to the Facebook event here
The calls to close the camps on Manus Island and Nauru are continuing to grow. In the wake of the Nauru files, more and more evidence of abuse of asylum seekers and refugees is emerging. The shocking reports of mental health breakdown and assault of children by guards, as well as rape and sexual assault of women, are a constant part of life for refugees on Nauru. These conditions are designed to drive refugees to despair, to send a message that they are not welcome and to force them to return home.
For the first time, a succession of polls are showing there is now a majority opposed to the government leaving refugees on Nauru and Manus Island.
The Australian government has now publicly accepted that the camp on Manus Island has to close, following the PNG Supreme Court decision in April that found it was unconstitutional and illegal. But they are still attempting to find another poor country somewhere to dump them. Attempts to find such a “third country” have been going on for over three years with no result. The Cambodia deal was an expensive fiasco.
Earlier in the year the “Let them stay” campaign stopped 267 asylum seekers being returned to Nauru and Manus Island. All those people remain in Australia. It is only through building similar pressure that we can force the government to close the camps completely and “Bring them here”.
Many doctors and medical workers have seen the conditions and the abuse on Manus and Nauru firsthand. Doctors for Refugees is calling on all Australian doctors and their supporters—specifically other health professionals but also the general public—to march on November 5 to demand humane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.
We want thousands of people to get behind their demands to close the detention camps on Manus and Nauru, to keep building the pressure to #BringThemHere, and to resettle all the asylum seekers and refugees from Manus Island and Nauru in Australia.
