When Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced last week that an asylum-seeker had died and scores of others had been injured, some critically, during a night of violence at the Manus Island detention centre, he was categorical about what had happened - and quick to pass judgment on why.
Most of the trouble - including the fatal assault and a shooting - had taken place outside the compound after a riot and breakout, the minister declared at a press conference the next morning. Asylum-seekers who "chose" to breach the perimeter fence were "putting themselves at much greater risk", as well as inviting "the response of law enforcement".
(The Papua New Guinean police's paramilitary Mobile Squad, notorious for human rights abuses, fired bullets that wounded at least one man.)
Asked about accounts by asylum-seekers of a rampage by armed gangs who dragged them out from under beds and inside cupboards, attacking them with iron bars and machetes, Morrison dismissed such stories as "rumours ... designed to create further instability" and advised journalists to be "very wary of unsubstantiated reports".
As the week progressed, he began to allude to "conflicting reports". It was not until Saturday night - five days later, and too late to make that evening's news bulletins or the Sunday papers - that he effectively admitted that his first, confident account had been wrong on almost every score. Most of the injuries had been sustained inside the centre, and they had been inflicted, allegedly, by local guards employed by the security contractor G4S - the same guards whom Morrison had praised for their bravery and handling of a "very tense and very stressful" situation. (Police officers must have been culpable, too, as they were the only people with guns.)
It was hard not to feel sceptical when the minister insisted the next day that he had relayed the initial information "in good faith".
For good faith is precisely what Morrison, a devout Christian, failed to demonstrate when he accepted, apparently without question, G4S's version of events, and rubbished the testimony of bleeding and terrified detainees who telephoned refugee advocates and media organisations in Australia. In doing so, he perpetuated the long and dishonourable tradition (by both main political parties) of demonising asylum-seekers, in this instance portraying them as undesirables who lacked all credibility and who had, effectively, brought their misfortune on themselves.
He did it in the knowledge that of the 60-plus people injured that night, all were asylum-seekers. No guards were hurt, and no police.
The same mindset appears to have been operating when Morrison rejected claims that navy personnel deliberately burned the hands of asylum-seekers while turning their boat around at sea - relying on the denials of senior naval officers, although the latter had not interviewed those making the claims.
The tradition goes back to the infamous "children overboard" scandal of 2001, when then Prime Minister John Howard claimed (despite information to the contrary) that asylum-seekers - whom he described as "those people" - had thrown their children into the ocean. In the case of Manus, even when Morrison recanted, there was no mea culpa. He again blamed the violence on "transferees" (a curious and dehumanising term he has adopted) and their "riotous and aggressive behaviour within the centre".
Yet it can't have been much of a riot. As even Prime Minister Tony Abbott acknowledged this week when he defended Morrison - declaring that "you don't want a wimp running border protection" - there was almost no damage. And most of those hurt, including 23-year-old Iranian Reza Berati, who died from head injuries, did not break out.
This is not to suggest that all asylum-seekers are saintly, and it's clear that in the run-up to last week's tragedy they had been goading and insulting the locally hired guards. But after months of incarceration on a remote island, in conditions condemned by the United Nations as inhumane, and amid continuing uncertainty about their fate, they must have been sorely provoked.
It was the guards' responsibility to quell tensions, not inflame them, and it was - is - Australia's responsibility to ensure detainees are kept safe. Last week, Morrison chided the asylum-seekers on Manus, saying he could guarantee their safety only "when they remain in the centre". Now it's plain that he cannot guarantee it, full stop. There will be an independent inquiry, which will encompass how the centre was set up by Labor. In the meantime, it's business as usual for Australia's immigration detention system - a system that even China, with its troubled human rights record, was moved to criticise last week.
If that sounds surreal, try this: the Manus facility, where Tamils are among the detainees, is being run by a former Sri Lankan military commander, Dinesh Perera. (Perera, now an Australian citizen, has worked for G4S for some years.) Or this: Cambodia is being courted by Canberra as a site for the resettlement of some of Australia's refugees. That's dirt-poor Cambodia, where the Government is engaged in a violent crackdown on dissent, and where ethnic Vietnamese have been harassed and attacked by the Khmer majority.
Perhaps most surreal of all, though, is that Morrison - with his colleagues, and their Labor counterparts - still professes to believe Manus Island is a suitable place to detain people fleeing persecution and torture. He has pledged it will stay open. And even if it were to close, the deaths would not cease. Last week, an Indian student who had overstayed his visa killed himself in a facility in Melbourne - one more illustration of the inhumanity of Australia's mandatory detention regime.
The Manus Island riot
Immigration Department boss Martin Bowles gave an account of the riot in which Reza Berati died and 62 other asylum-seekers were injured to an Senate committee.
Monday, February 17
7pm: Papua New Guinea's police deployed a dog squad outside the detention centre.
9.45pm: Asylum-seekers pushed down fences and threw rocks and sticks. Refugees not involved were evacuated to the playing fields outside the centre.
Tuesday, February 18
Midnight: All staff were evacuated and the health clinic relocated. G4S guards drew back. Police discharged a gas canister and fired warning shots. Unrest continued for an hour or two.
1am: Bowles was told about the events and rang Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Bowles and departmental staff had a teleconference with service providers on Manus Island before and after Morrison gave an initial press conference in Darwin. Bowles briefed Morrison before his second press conference on the Tuesday evening. He said at no point in the early stages were there suggestions G4S staff were involved in clashes. "Probably not until around the Saturday ... was there some of that information out there that had some credible form that I was made aware of." Bowles was not aware of locals being let into the centre as help for the guards but said the claims would be examined.
- AAP
The uneasy alliance of parties forming the government is on the verge of collapse.