Escalating unrest saw three men briefly escape the Manus Island detention facility at the weekend and run into the sea in apparent joint suicide attempt.
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On Saturday, 40 more people – all single men, mostly Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans – arrived at Manus.
Asylum seekers already there reported that the men had not been told where they were headed before they left Australia.
With the vast majority of people who arrived after August 13 being released from detention into the community on bridging visas for processing, the men apparently believed they too would be released for community processing.
They told asylum seekers on Manus Island they only realised they were heading to the Papua New Guinea processing centre once on the plane.
Australian Federal Police members, interpreters, medical and immigration staff accompanied the men.
''They were all shocked,'' an asylum seeker on Manus wrote in an email to the mainland.
''Serco staff got them out of their rooms by different reasons. At the last moments they were being told the truth.
''When they arrived to Manus Island they ignore processing. They did not get their property too. They did not go to the tents. They have started a hunger strike.''
The asylum seeker wrote that G4S guards rescued the men.
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) confirmed that three men who had recently arrived on Manus tried to escape from the facility late on Saturday night, before their attempt was thwarted and they were returned to the facility.
But a department spokeswoman says DIAC ''categorically denies'' separate reports from the island that a man tried to hang himself on Saturday.
An asylum seeker who emailed Fairfax at the weekend wrote: ''The guy who hanged up himself is not ok. He can not speak. All the [security firm] G4S staffs said he didn't hanged up and he just dropped but residents said he hanged up himself.''
But the DIAC spokeswoman said this was not the case. One man had been injured and taken to the island's medical facility with minor injuries after banging his head against a fence on Saturday afternoon. DIAC would not comment on the circumstances of the man's injuries.
