Some expatriate staff from the company which runs Australia's offshore refugee detention centre on Nauru have been sent packing from the island.
Protest on Nauru Photo: supplied Refugee Action Coalition
107 staff with service provider Canstruct were flown out at the weekend after being told accommodation support would no longer be available for them.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said the workers were effectively expelled after Australian Border Force moved to stop paying rent for the staff at a hotel.
He said Nauru's government was collecting this rent, and didn't appreciate ABF's move to change arrangements.
"In the response to that, the Nauru government has expelled CANSTRUCT workers; the demonstrations have started again in the detention centre; the separated families, the people who are still waiting for refugee determinations, and the tensions about the fact that there's no sign of another plane of people who are going to the United States; that's all cranking up."
Ian Rintoul said that additionally, a refugee sustained a severe head injury in a motorbike accident on Saturday and needs to be urgently medevacced.