For years many asylum seekers have had little choice but to undertake a perilous ocean voyage from South East Asia to Australia, seeking safety. Australia announced in July 2013 that asylum seekers arriving by boat would be sent to Papua New Guinea for processing. If found to be genuine refugees, they would then be resettled in Papua New Guinea, not Australia. By November, just over 1,100 asylum seekers were detained on an offshore processing facility on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. This Amnesty International report outlines the human rights abuses that detainees on Manus Island face.
