Australia confirmed Thursday it will sign an asylum-seeker resettlement deal with Cambodia in a move slammed by human rights groups as violating the country's international obligations.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison will be in Phnom Penh on Friday to seal the deal, which could see some asylum-seekers currently held in offshore detention camps by Australia transferred to the Southeast Asian nation.

Australia's immigration detention system was a toxic environment akin to torture, according to the chief psychiatrist for asylum-seekers for the past three years, a report said Tuesday.

Australia's human rights commissioner said Thursday the government must come clean about conditions at offshore asylum-seeker camps after an inquiry heard of an alleged cover-up of mental health problems.

Australia's highest court Wednesday dismissed a challenge to the government's policy of sending asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea, ruling detention at an island immigration camp legal.

An Iranian who arrived at Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island by boat in July 2013 brought the case after he was transferred to PNG's Manus Island.

Families of asylum-seekers killed in a shipwreck off Australia's Christmas Island in 2010 are suing the government, arguing it breached its duty of care in a move Canberra Tuesday blasted as "shameful".

Fifty people died when a rickety fishing boat crowded with nearly 100 Iraqi, Kurdish and Iranian asylum-seekers was dashed against jagged rocks in dangerous seas at the remote Indian Ocean outpost.

Two Indonesian nationals were Thursday sentenced to six and nine years in jail in Australia for people-smuggling, after a doomed venture in which more than 100 people drowned.

The men were not charged with organizing the people-smuggling venture or with the deaths of any passengers who perished when the boat sank off Christmas Island in June 2012.

Australia said Tuesday a week-long protest by asylum-seekers at one of its immigration detention centers had been broken up with six people injured.

Refugee activists said hundreds of would-be refugees at the Christmas Island compound, about 2,600 kilometers (1,612 miles) from the western city of Perth, were refusing food. They claimed seven had sewn their lips together.

Seven asylum-seekers sewed their lips shut Sunday as part of a mass hunger strike protest involving hundreds of detainees in an Australian immigration detention center, activists said.

Refugee activists said seven Iranian men had stitched their lips to protest their detention on Australia's remote Christmas Island for almost a year under punitive policies aimed at deterring people-smuggling voyages.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was unmoved by new reports Friday of asylum-seeker abuse and claims a group was turned back to Indonesia in a lifeboat, saying his harsh policies were "working".

He rebuffed suggestions the military should release official video of their "Operation Sovereign Borders" missions after an asylum-seeker told Fairfax Media three men on his boat allegedly had their hands held against hot engine pipes by navy personnel to punish them for protesting.

President Michel Suleiman expressed relief on Saturday over the expected return of the Lebanese who survived the Australia-bound boat tragedy.

He voiced hope that the Indonesian authorities would continue its measures to swiftly return the bodies of the victims to their relatives, the state-run National News Agency reported.