Demands Grow For Inquiry Into Australia Refugee Abuse

SYDNEY, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Augst,2016) - Australia was Monday facing growing opposition demands for an inquiry into its treatment of asylum-seekers on remote Pacific islands after further allegations emerged of abuse against refugees. Photographs published in Australian media on the weekend showed two bloodied Afghan men after they were allegedly attacked with an iron bar by locals on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. The graphic images follow the leaking last week of some 2,000 incident reports filled in by workers on the second island to which Australia sends asylum-seekers arriving by boat, Nauru, detailing abuse suffered by asylum-seekers.

"We're seeing more and more disturbing reports coming out from Nauru," opposition Labor leader Bill Shorten said Monday. "Just because people are in detention doesn't mean that they have to be mistreated and it doesn't mean that they should be kept in indefinite detention," he told reporters in Brisbane. "That's why Labor is leading the push to have a Senate inquiry." Shorten said he still supported the offshore processing of asylum-seekers on Nauru and in PNG to dissuade others from making the dangerous journey to Australia, but that refugees should not be left to languish in Pacific camps indefinitely.