Month: November 2017

MANUS EMERGENCY FUND UPDATE Sunday 26th November

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Hi everyone,
So it has been a pretty terrible few days for the men.

Thursday and Friday saw PNG immigration and police using violence to forcefully move the men onto buses and into town.
Many men have been injured in the process, and there are still men who do not have a bed in town and are sleeping on the floor in classrooms and prayer rooms.

Construction of some accommodation is still not complete. Power and water is still not fully functioning in some of the compounds.
The system for getting the men food and their allowance is still not in place.
The system for the men to get free medication is not functioning yet.

Locals blocked roads in protest at the relocation of the men, and I’ve been getting lots of messages from men who are not feeling safe at all.

In short, the whole relocation has been a traumatic mess for the men. Facilities, services, healthcare and adequate security are STILL not ready….nearly 4 weeks after the closure of the RPC…yet they have forcefully and violently moved the men into the town compounds.

The men are still not safe and free, and still have no answers about their future.

Support with food, cigarettes, toiletries etc is likely to continue to be needed over coming weeks until things are in place for the men to be able to purchase these themselves.

During the attacks on the men in the RPC on Thursday and Friday, immigration and police destroyed the men’s food, water, clothes and other possessions, going room to room. They even set fire to some.
They also smashed or stole many of the men’s phones. They especially targeted anyone who was photographing or filming what they were doing.
Many men were beaten and forced onto buses without being able to gather any of their belongings at all.

Some men have been left with literally only the clothes they were wearing.

The men are rallying together to support each other, but they now need our assistance to replace phones, clothes, shoes and other posessions destroyed by police and immigration.

GFMAN are taking details of the men who have lost everything and have started the process of getting emergency purchases of clothes, shoes and phones for the men.

If you have a friend who has lost their clothes and other possessions, please get them to message me, or you can message me on their behalf.

Many of the men were injured on Thursday and Friday. Some men have required medical attention to treat serious cuts and other wounds. But they do not have the medical supplies needed to then continue to change the dressings.

GFMAN have purchased all the wound dressings we could locally for two of the compounds for the men who were injurred by police and immigration, and will be getting more supplies delivered in the coming week.
These are at Hillside and West Haus now if you have a friend needing wound dressings/antiseptics etc.

There are also many men with both chronic and accute infections and illnesses needing medication. The men are supposed to be receiving their medications for free for the first 6 months post closure of the RPC, but this system is not in place and functioning yet and the men have been expected to pay to get their scripts filled.
We will continue to try to support men with access to meds until IHMS have this sorted out.

Men can attend the IHMS clinic to get their prescriptions, then send a message to me (or you can message for them) to ask for assistance with payment.

There are hundreds of men affected by the need for financial assistance with medications and with the need for phones and clothes.
And we continue to need your support to be able to supply these.

Thanks everyone.
Ali Murdoch
Gifts for Manus and Nauru
giftsformanusandnauru@outlook.com.au
or
facebook.com/ali.murdoch

MANUS CRISIS UPDATE: Tuesday 21st November 2017

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Hello everyone,

I just want to give a bit of an update about how things are in the RPC at this point, and what GFMAN are currently focussing on and doing.

We are currently on day 21 since the food, water and power were shut down in the Manus RPC, and day 19 of GFMAN purchasing/delivering supplies for the men.
The situation in the camp is absolutely dire, and getting more so by the day.
Authorities continue to try to block all access for deliveries of food, medications and other supplies.
Despite this, deliveries are continuing on a regular basis, with the men themselves working incredibly hard in extreme circumstances to support each other and to get the food and other supplies in and distributed.
We are honoured to be able to support them in what they are doing by providing the finances and some logistical support for the food, medications and other supplies they so desperately need.

THANK YOU SO MUCH to the men, to the locals putting themselves at risk to help, and to donors and other supporters who are making this possible.

As deliveries are being actively prevented by authorities, and therefore all have to be done covertly, there are limits to how much can be transported and when. The issue of how to get enough food in remains a big one, so the men are living on food rations meaning they sometimes only have one meal a day. It is keeping them alive but is no substitute for proper, unhindered supply of food and other necessities.

Likewise, the men are having to ration water in the tropical heat.

This week saw the authorities go into the camp and destroy the water tanks holding precious rain water, tip out the rain water being stored in bins, and destroy the well the men had dug.
This, combined with days at a time of no rain, has meant that water shortages have taken on a new level of urgency and harm for the men.
It is an absolute disgrace that the authorities have actively destroyed the men’s water sources and exposed them to further, potentially fatal, harm from illnesses associated with lack of water and with contaminated and unsafe drinking water. They need to immediately reconnect a supply of potable drinking water, or at the very least, stop blocking access for us to deliver sufficient amounts of clean water.

The health of the men in the RPC is at crisis point, with hundreds of the men having either long term chronic conditions which are now lacking treatment resulting in worsening health, or who have developed illnesses because of the conditions they have been experiencing inside the RPC over the past 3 weeks.
GFMAN has been continuing to pay for medications and other medical supplies that we are able to access without a script in PNG, but there are now large numbers of men who need medications that are only available with a doctor’s prescription and whose previous supply of medication has now run out.
This is extremely concerning and dangerous, as not only are serious medical conditions going untreated, but some men are experiencing dangerous withdrawals from medications.
IHMS will not go to the RPC to treat men and the authorities will not allow entry for other doctors. This leaves the only options as either a) moving to the accommodation compounds in town where the men do not feel safe, where there is also not adequate access to food, water and electricity and where they are not confident that they will receive adequate health care anyway, or b) go without their medications and other health care.
These are unacceptable options.

The ASRC volunteer medical team who are providing phone consultations are doing a fantastic job, but it is no substitute for unhindered access to on the ground medical professionals and treatment.
We fully support the AMA in their calls to be granted access to the RPC to assess the health and living conditions of the men, and we further call for there to be unhindered access for medical practitioners to enter the RPC for the purpose of treating the men and prescribing medications.

This week we have received information from IHMS that the men who are living in the town accommodation compounds in Lorengau are to now have free access to their medications. This is good news. However, this information has not been communicated to the men and doctors are still telling the men that they must pay for their own medications. As the men do not have the means to purchase their own medications it has meant that many of the men have been at risk of the same dangers associated with going off their medications as discussed earlier.

So this week we have been trying to get word out to all the men in Lorengau about how they can make appointments, get a prescription, and access their medications free of charge.

Please, if you have a friend living in one of the town accommodation compounds who is need of medication but does not yet know how he can access it, please ask him to contact me (or you can contact me for him) so I can help him with how to do that and record any problems he has with accessing medications.

Food remains an issue for the men in the ELTC also.

Some men are now receiving the small allowance they need to purchase enough food, but there are still a significant number of men who have not yet started receiving their allowance despite having been in town for weeks, and so are needing additional support.
If you have a friend in the ELTC in this position who is not yet receiving support with food, please contact me so we can arrange support for him.
We are also continuing with our usual main work of providing phone credit for people in Manus and other parts of PNG and for people in Nauru. We are currently using some of the emergency funds to supplement the phone credit fund as needed so that the men in Manus receive their phone credit on their due date, rather than having the usual wait until it gets to their turn on the waiting list.
Thanks again to all supporters and donors making it possible for us to support the men in Manus RPC and Lorengau in this especially difficult time for them, and to continue our usual support for the people Australia is holding in PNG and Nauru.
Thanks
Ali Murdoch
Gifts for Manus and Nauru

SOME VIDEOS AND ARTICLES OUTLINING THE CURRENT SITUATION IN THE RPC AND ON MANUS ISLAND IN GENERAL
The Project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aaLS39L6Vg

For the full video from the ASRC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6jua0KUuc&feature=youtu.be

New York Times article about the situation at Manus:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/18/world/australia/manus-island-australia-detainees.html

Junkee article:
http://junkee.com/manus-refugees-stories/133808

EMERGENCY FOOD CROWDFUND UPDATE – Sunday 12th November 2017

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Hi everyone! Thanks for the continued support for the men in the RPC.
Getting food in while authorities continue to try to block the men’s access to food, water and supplies remains a challenge, but deliveries of food and other supplies are still happening.

Thanks for donating and making this possible.

We are also now looking at trying to address two new problems.

The first is food for the men in the ELTC.

At the East Lorengau Transit Centre in the town (ELTC), the men are supposed to receive food packs and an allowance each week to live off.

However this is not happening. The men who have moved there in recent weeks are not receiving any allowance yet.

The food packs provided include one larger food pack with most of the week’s food items, and a smaller pack later in the week to top it up.

The men who have moved to the East Lorengau Transit Centre in town over the past few days have only received the smaller top up pack, which doesn’t contain the staples like rice or oil or any protein… and so even with the top up pack (milk, cereal, bread) they have not received sufficient food to last them until the next food packs are delivered this week.

The food packs, even when they receive both of them, are not enough to feed a man for a week, and they are expected to buy the rest of their food out of their allowance…except the men are not being paid an allowance yet. Men who have been in the transit centre for weeks are still waiting to be paid any of their allowance, and so are trying to get by just on these food packs.

So we are now looking into how we can get some food distributed to these men for the next few days, and how we can supplement the food packs for the men in the ELTC until their allowance starts and they can buy their own food.

The second issue is medication for the men.

In October, IHMS distributed a 28-30 day supply of the men’s medications and told them they would then have to sort out their own.

That supply of medications has now run out or will run out in coming days, leaving hundreds of men without their medication and with no way to pay for their own.

This is incredibly concerning to us and is a huge stress for the men.

So we are currently looking at ways that we can coordinate to get financial and logistical assistance for as many of the men as possible to access their medications.

Here is how you can help.

Funds for this purpose can be made into our ‘medical’ bank account (details here: https://giftsformanusandnauru.org.au/how-to-donate/ )

Or donations can continue to be made to this emergency crowdfund and we will allocate some funding from this for medications as able.