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Australia funds lethal brute squad
Melbourne Age - August 4, 2013
The "Mobile Squad" officers, who just last month beat a local man to death on the island, are receiving a special living-away allowance of about $100 a day from funding provided by the department.
The Australian funding is a handsome bounty for the squad when the average local wage for security staff is about $1.50 an hour, and represents a previously secret aspect to Australia's "PNG solution" of directing asylum seekers to PNG.
James Sipuan, 65, said his son Raymond, 21, had only been drunk and swore at the officers when he was beaten in front of hundreds of horrified islanders in the main market on the island in July.
He said Raymond left the police station later that day and was in the market when the officers saw him there and started brutally bashing him again, fatally injuring him.
"They picked him up like a rugby league tackle and speared him into the ground twice, according to witnesses," Mr Sipuan said.
The squad has also been provided with three rented Toyota Landcruisers at a cost of about $200,000, an amount paid for by Australian Immigration Department funds, according to the rental agent.
The cars can be distinguished from other rentals by the 28-man squad's practice of hanging their makeshift crowd-controlling whips made out of rubber fan belts from the side mirrors of the vehicles to intimidate the local population.
On Friday the Australian Immigration Department did not deny the payments were occurring and said $558,821 had been allocated last year to cover costs associated with the temporary centre, including costs for PNG immigration staff and police deployment to Manus Island.
He said the police operations raised by Fairfax were "a matter for the PNG government and its law enforcement authorities".
The presence of the paramilitary unit on the island suggests PNG and Australian officials fear a major clash with landowners who have already threatened a protest if they do not get a cut out of the asylum seeker detention centre projects.
The squad's name is a byword for police brutality in Papua New Guinea and many of its operations have been condemned by human rights organisations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch for incidents of killings, rapes, bashings and evictions.
Last year Australian anthropologist Dr Andrew Lattas, who had done extensive field research in PNG, warned of the mobile squads being used as private armies by logging companies and said they had been beating up villagers, locking them in shipping containers and whipping them with sticks and fan belts to ensure logging projects went ahead, with police expenses paid by the companies. The mobile squad has been stationed on the island since December.
Mr Sipuan said he believed his son had been killed at the market. "I believe he was killed at that time. They took him to the police station and left him in the cells. They didn't try to take him to the hospital."
Hearing about the bashing MrSipuan rang the police station and was told his son was asleep. "I drove down there and I couldn't wake him up. We took him to hospital, but they couldn't revive him," he said.
"Such behaviour, the murder of my son is barbaric. The mobile squad is for dealing with tribal fights or rioting people. They should not be on the island. If something goes wrong then they can call them in."
Mr Sipuan said the Australian funding of the squad was wrong.
The day after the killing PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill promised an investigation and that the particular mobile squad involved would be removed from the island after Manus Island local MP Ron Knight raised the issue in Parliament.
Three of the squad have been arrested and charged but are not being kept in the cell where Raymond died.
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