Personal security and the Manus detention case

Human development is a concept that is at the heart of human security. The website Measure of America defines the concept as:

"the process of enlarging people’s freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live."

You can also listen to the podcast below by Selim Jahan of the Human Development Report Office on the concept of human development.

The UNDP states that:

"Human development – or the human development approach - is about expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on people and their opportunities and choices."

The Measure of America website states that the human development concept was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq. He argued that existing measure of human progress failed to account for the true purpose of development - to improve people's lives. He focused on the failure of Gross Domestic Product as a measure of well-being.

It is a shift from looking at development from an economic point of view to a human point of view. This is expressed in the UNDP definition where:

"human development focuses on improving the lives people lead rather than assuming that economic growth will lead, automatically, to greater wellbeing for all. Income growth is seen as a means to development, rather than an end in itself."

In our required reading by Hampson (2008), he makes the connection between human development and human security.  He said human security is the study of the ways that the forces of globalization have damage the prospects for human development and the provision of basic human needs.

If you look at our offshore detention case, the relocation of the asylum seekers to Manus Island is possible due to the improvements in transportation. Also, according to Globalization 101, it is the result of the process of interaction and integration among the governments of Australia and PNG.

The border security breaches by people smugglers from Indonesia ferrying those seeking asylum in Australia is a transnational issue. Thus, the Australian government needs a strategy to deter people seeking asylum from coming to Australia resulting in the offshore detention centre on Manus Island.

Now the concern is for the personal security of those living in the detention or transition centre on Manus Island. Personal security is defined by UNDP in the Human Develop Report of 1994 as security from physical violence. Regardless of where you live your life is increasingly threatened by sudden, unpredictable violence.

The Report states that the threats take several forms:

• Threats from the state (physical torture)
• Threats from other states (war)
• Threats from other groups of people (ethnic tension)
• Threats from individual or gangs against other individuals or or gangs (crime, street violence)
• Threats directed against women (rape, domestic violence)
• Threat directed at Children based on their vulnerability and dependence (child abuse)
• Threats to self (suicide, drug use).

I would like to stress on the final point on threats to self in relations to our case. Let us go back to the video and to the part where an employee of the center was interviewed by the reporter. He talked about cases of suicide in the detention centre.

Apart from the video, we have a report on The New York Times written by Sarah Malik on the body of an asylum seeker who hanged himself near the transit centre on Manus Island. The asylum seeker from Iran was said to have been suffering depressive episodes. The report was written on August 7, 2017.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 2 October 2017 that an asylum seeker from Sri Lanka died on Manus Island. I noticed the word 'suicide' in the statement given by the Provincial Police Commander of Manus.  

The Guardian has an interesting twist. Friends of the asylum seeker who died begged Australia for help before his death. He was suffering from acute mental health crisis for more than a year and attempted to commit suicide before eventually taking his own life.

Back in 2016, Ben Doherty from The Guardian reported that he was found;

"naked in the Mike compound, yelling in an incoherent and distressed state, and was arrested and taken to Lorengau prison, before being taken to the "managed accommodation area" within the detention centre for people suffering mental heath problems" 

What happened to Hamed Shamshiripour is a case of personal security. The security professionals and other government officers from Australia and PNG were not able to prevent him from taking his own life. He himself was not in the right state of mind to avoid taking his life.

On the other hand, the Sri Lankan Tamil man who killed himself was alleged to have committed another offense related to personal security. According to a report by Eric Tlozek, he was charged with sexually assaulting a local women in January, 2017.

The victim's family was shocked after hearing what the 31 year old did. The audio report talked about how the woman met the man at the market and followed him to a nearby hotel where she was sexually assaulted.

Therefore, the personal security of the asylum seekers is an issue that both governments need to address. But also we have to think about the personal security of the Manus people in light of what happened to the 19 year old woman.