PNG's Covid-19 spike worries stranded refugees

As Covid-19 cases surge in Port Moresby, refugees stranded there by Australia fear they are too weak to fight off infection.

About 180 men remain in Papua New Guinea, seven years after being detained on Manus Island. Moved to hotels in the capital last year, some refugees were then put in apartments, all paid for by the Australian government.

Refugee Shaminda Kanapathi said the men were weakened by years of arbitrary detention for seeking asylum in Australia, making them vulnerable to the virus.

Shaminda Kanapathi farewells Behrouz Boochani at Port Moresby's airport. Photo: Shaminda Kanapathi

"Systematic torture mentally and physically affected us. Most of the remaining refugees in Port Moresby are really sick. People can be easily infected with Covid-19. It will make it very hard for them to survive."

While doing their best, PNG's health workers would struggle to control the outbreak the wider it spreads, the refugee said.

As of Monday, PNG had confirmed 333 cases of the coronavirus in the last 32 days in 11 of its 22 provinces.

Australia's Human Rights Law Centre agreed PNG's health system could be overwhelmed.

The centre's David Burke said the refugees should be evacuated to the relative safety of Australia or New Zealand.

"The Australian government has always been responsible for the people that it has cruelly detained in offshore detention. This duty of care that it owes to these men doesn't go away in a pandemic," Burke said.

"It's the Australian government's responsibility to keep people in Papua New Guinea and the people it is holding in Nauru safe during this public health crisis."

But no people remain in offshore detention, according to a spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs - reported last month by the ABC. The report revealed department data from June referring to 372 "transitory persons" still in PNG and Nauru.

A better description would be "stateless", according Father Giorgio Licini of the Catholic Church, who is providing pastoral care to those in Port Moresby.

Fr. Giorgio Licini (right) with Helal Uddin and a refugee stranded in Port Moresby. Photo: Giorgio Licini

The priest entreated the PNG government in March to send the men to Australia to protect them from the coronavirus. Instead they were all moved back to hotels.

"They were given this little bit more safer hotel accommodation so they are not so exposed (to the virus) in the sense that they don't need to go to the market," Licini said.

"Although when they were outside and they had to interact with the people, buy their food, cook their meals - it was somehow better in the sense that, 'you keep yourself busy'."

Cooped up in hotels, the mental health of many of the men continues to deteriorate. About 30 could soon be resettled in United States under the ponderous refugee swap deal for which about 120 of those in PNG are ineligible, Licini said.

The priest rejected suggestions those men could return to their countries of origin.

"Those who decide on them, never see them, never talk to them. They work from their office. I see them, I talk to them, I meet them. They cry on my shoulders so I know at this point - there is no going back."