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The 23-year-old Iranian who set himself on fire in political protest outside a refugee compound on Nauru island has died in a Brisbane hospital, prompting Australia’s leading refugee rights group to condemn Immigration Minister Peter Dutton for “having blood on his hands.”
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection confirmed that the refugee, identified as Omid, who set himself on fire on Wednesday during a visit by the United Nations, has died.
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The Refugee Action Coalition, one of Australia’s most prominent refugee rights groups, condemned the Immigration department’s head and said his policies were responsible for the young man’s death.
“We have just confirmed that Omid's life support has been turned off,” the Refugee Action Coalition said on its Facebook page. “Omid, Your blood is on Dutton's hands, both for the delays to your evacuation, and for holding you hostage on Nauru till you broke. We'll ensure that your martyrdom isn't in vain. Shame Australia.”
But on Friday Dutton continued to try and defend the amount of time it took to transfer the injured man off the tiny Pacific island, where Australia detains asylum-seekers as part of its offshore incarceration policy.
"I'm advised (Omid's) condition is still critical and I don't have any further advice beyond that but he's not in a good way at all," Dutton told reporters in Sydney on Friday.
"This is not a plane sitting on the runway at Nauru... It's a contracted arrangement where you need an air ambulance so you can provide stability and assistance to the patient in flight and obviously all of that was put in place to contract those services and the decision, as I say, was made very quickly once the condition of the patient was understood and the medical assistance was provided," he said.
Omid’s wife had previously complained about the delay in medical treatment for her husband, blaming Australia’s officials.
The recognized refugee was taken to the Republic of Nauru’s hospital before being airlifted out almost a day later.
“Staff in Nauru hospital couldn’t help Omid in any way because they were unequipped,” his wife told the Guardian Australia. “A lack of proper equipment and facilities was the reason that staff couldn’t help and treat Omid in the Nauru hospital.”
She added that it took two hours for a doctor from the International International Health and Medical Services to arrive and treat him, while emphasizing that he was not given intravenous pain relief.
On Friday, protests gathered in Sydney to demand 850 asylum seekers detained on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island be sent to Australia. The demonstrations come just days after Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court found the detention centers in Manus island to be illegal and the government announced plans to close the centers.
"I think we should bring them here and process them here. The suicides, the destruction of their mental health from incarceration with nowhere to go and no hope and no future, that's wrong,” said protester Joe McDonald. “That's not Australian, that's not what we stand for. We should be bringing them here and helping them sort out a new life for themselves."
"And I just am shocked and horrified to think that we are actually reverting to the situation when we had the White Australia Policy, and we now hide our heads over that one. We're shocked to remember it, but we're doing it again," said Joanna Van Kool, another protester.
The news of Omid’s death comes as refugee human rights group say at least five others attempted suicides occurred around the same time, with Friday reports saying that two people had been arrested for attempting suicide, which has been deemed a crime on Nauru.
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