Asylum Seeker’s Body Is Found on Manus Island, and Police Suspect Suicide
7, 2017
SYDNEY, Australia — The body of an asylum seeker who was said to have been suffering depressive episodes was discovered on Monday by schoolchildren in Papua New Guinea, near the site of an Australian transit center for refugees,
and the police said they believed he had hanged himself.
The asylum seekers have been sent to Manus and to Nauru, an island nation to the east, as part of a policy
that Australia says is meant to deter human traffickers from sending desperate people to its shores on rickety boats, usually by way of Indonesia.
Kurdish fled that He was found by the schoolchildren, who then alerted their teachers, who then alerted police.
Inspector Yapu said the body was found at the East Lorengau primary school on Monday morning, close to the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Center.
In June this year, Australia agreed to a landmark $53 million settlement in a class-action
lawsuit filed on behalf of current and former detainees on Manus Island.
The East Lorengau Refugee Transit Center, near where the body was found, is a separate facility
set up to house people who are to be resettled elsewhere, including the United States.
