Dateline interviews Manus Island inmates

SBS journalist Mark Davis has landed exclusive access to Manus Island detention centre, in a Dateline story that is sure to attract attention.

While Four Corners showed footage of the detention centre last month, no journalist has stepped foot inside the centre since it re-opened nine months ago.

But Mark Davis interviews detention centre guards and inmates and learns there hasn’t been a single processing interview to assess asylum seeker claims since it opened.

Not a single journalist has been allowed into Manus Island since the controversial detention centre re-opened nine months ago. In an Australian exclusive, Dateline’s Mark Davis finds out what the Australian Government is trying to hide.

As it continues to send more asylum seekers to the island, the Government insists that it is Papua New Guinean bureaucracy preventing journalists from seeing the detention centre for themselves.

Davis questions this claim and is granted access to Manus Island by the PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who says emphatically that he has no issues with journalists or non-government organisations visiting the island and facility – a view supported by the PNG police and even the Army, whose land the detention centre is on.

“We have allowed every visitor in our country to go to any part of the country if they so desire, so there’s no restrictions on our part”, O’Neill says. “I can assure you that you are free to go to Manus any time you want.”

With its claims of PNG red tape in doubt, Dateline asks what the Australian Government is really hiding. In exclusive interviews with the detention centre guards and inmates, Davis learns of a wave of attempted suicides and acts of self-harm among the desperate asylum seekers. But it’s not because of leaky tents.

For the first time, guards and inmates reveal there hasn’t been a single processing interview to assess asylum seeker claims since the centre opened. “I think it is not human”, one guard says.

After nine months in detention, the Manus Island inmates are beginning to think they will be trapped on the island forever. With their sense of frustration and fear growing, many are asking whether Manus Island is a process centre – or a prison.

Tuesday 9.30pm on SBS ONE.