Australia is currently running their own camps;

>"Our detention centres are concentration camps and must be closed

>Many Australians may wonder why it was necessary to set up detention centres in the far north of the country, or offshore, far from the Australian mainland, surrounded by guards and razor wire, in circumstances of great secrecy, with all staff and visiting medical personnel banned from telling outsiders about conditions in the camps, or reporting physical or sexual abuse of detainees.

>Or why it was necessary to make it nearly impossible for lawyers or journalists to visit the centres. Or why the Immigration Department was allowed (or required?) to delay vital medical treatment to Hamid Khazaei, causing his death. Or send a raped and pregnant detainee for an abortion to Port Moresby (where it is illegal) rather than Australia; or delay the treatment or transfer to Australia of the man who committed suicide last week by setting himself on fire on Nauru?

>When Nazi Germany set up concentration camps in the 1930s, the purpose was to separate various groups – communists, Jews, homosexuals – from the German community, to prevent them being "tainted" by such people. The camps were maintained in great secrecy; most Germans had little or no knowledge of the awful and dehumanising conditions in which detainees were kept.

>Australia's detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island may have originally been intended to hold detainees for a short period – say, six months – while they were investigated and their claims to refugee status were assessed. But that has long since ceased to justify the existence of these centres.

>The conditions there are bleak, the tropical heat extreme, airconditioning is rare (guards, of course, are in much better, airconditioned, accommodation) – the guards and surrounding locals are hostile, and detainees are regularly physically and verbally abused.

>The worst aspect, however, is the indefinite nature of the detention, and that so many of the refugees who have established their entitlement to refugee status have been held for more than three years, and face an indefinite future in detention.

>Australia's policy towards asylum seekers is one of deliberate and calculated barbaric cruelty. It is clearly designed to make the situation of asylum seekers intolerable, to dehumanise them, and to force them to return to their original countries; for example, Hazaras from Afghanistan must return to a country increasingly dominated by the Taliban, which have waged genocide against them; and those who have fled Iran must return to the waiting arms of the Revolutionary Guards and Tehran's appalling Evin prison, one of the most frightful hell-holes in the world. Iran last year executed more than 1000 prisoners.

>That Australia's policy is intentionally cruel is well demonstrated by government ministers who have rejected all offers, whether from New Zealand or the premiers of all Australian states, to settle any of the present asylum seekers. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, rejected those offers out of hand. The Prime Minister said it would not be a good marketing look.

>The camps in Manus Island and Nauru have long since ceased to be mere detention centres. They are now concentration camps.

>Labor's immigration spokesman Richard Marles has called offshore processing "the single most important policy that any Australian government has made". The Prime Minister recently described those who oppose the government's policy towards asylum seekers as "misty-eyed".

>A week ago, representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees visited Nauru and told detainees that none of them would escape from the camps within 10 years. In the past week, two have set themselves on fire. It is the only way to end their suffering. Are those cowards and hypocrites in the Australian Parliament going to tell us that this is merely another attention-attracting device?"