WikiLeaks lawyer, on ‘inhibited person’ travel list, stopped at airport
Australian human rights lawyer and WikiLeaks supporter Jennifer Robinson appears to have been placed on a travel watch list and was prevented from leaving the UK this morning until approval was secured from the Australian High Commission.
Robinson was returning to Australia to speak at the same conference as Attorney-General Nicola Roxon tomorrow — the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association’s Regional Law Conference — on the apt subject of “Lawyers in the firing line”. Roxon is giving an address on human rights.
Robinson was stopped when checking in at Heathrow early this morning Australian time and told she was an “inhibited person” and that approval from the Australian High Commission would be needed before she was allowed to proceed. She tweeted
Security guard: “you must have done something controversial” because we have to phone the embassy. “Certain government agencies” list.
Intriguingly, however, no Australian agency uses the term “inhibited person”. A DIAC spokesman told Crikey “the only mechanism that would restrict uplift of a person to Australia is the Movement Alert List (MAL).”
The government doesn’t discuss who is on the MAL, but it is understood it would be highly unusual for an Australian to be on the MAL.
This raises the possibility that, in spite of what she was told, Robinson was stopped not at the behest of an Australian agency but a foreign agency. In December, Robinson was in the US to monitor the pre-trial hearing of Bradley Manning and was sharply critical of the conduct of the hearing. In January, she confronted US Attorney-General Eric Holder about the Obama administration’s treatment of WikiLeaks when both of them attended the Sundance Film Festival.
Robinson is currently en route to Hong Kong before travelling on to Sydney, where she is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning.
A short time ago DFAT issued the following statement to Crikey:
“We are not aware of any Australian Government restriction applying to Ms Robinson’s travel. As an Australian with a valid passport, she would be free to return to Australia at any stage. The UK border authorities or airline of travel may be able to provide further insight on claims that she was impeded from boarding her flight.”
The DFAT statement is a reference to the fact that airlines themselves may stop people from boarding if they believe they may not be permitted to enter their destination country, leaving the airline with the cost of returning them to their point of departure. As Robinson is an Australian, however, this clearly would not have applied to her.
Crikey is seeking comment from the UK Border Agency.
Perhaps they don’t like Julian’s new TV show.
So the UK govt. is yet again doing the bidding of the paranoid USA….
The Orwellian language is a giveaway…Note that the Blair govt lied when it denied complicity with the CIA in ‘renditions” for torture…
Nicola ROXON must have some friends at Heathrow. Robinson is also an advocate for the people of WEST PAPUA who are trying to remove the Indonesian invaders.
Weird stuff!
(This raises the possibility that, in spite of what she was told, Robinson was stopped not at the behest of an Australian agency but a foreign agency. )
There it is, right there!
She doesn’t sound inhibited to me. Good on her.
When did it become normal where those who advocate for human rights and transparency are listed as potential ‘enemies’ or worthy of ‘watching’. What if it is the State that commits the unlawfual acts? At least Wikileaks and people like Ms Robinson are also keeping the B**s honest. (As much as is humanely possible). What is it with dem Yankees.
Roxon wanted the limelight herself, it seems
What’s the point of having a passport? What’s the point of being a member of a ‘developed country’ that boasts of being democratic, freedom loving, blah blah!
I suppose she should be grateful for not ending up in a cell next to Bradley Manning?
Scary!
(And the best SB can do is once again engage in childish political point scoring! I’m sure she’s Christopher Pyne! the little poodle who just keeps on yapping around peoples’ heels?)
This smells like our Yank masters, have our government totally under control, smacks of treason to me, when is our GUTLESS so called leaders, going to say ENOUGH!.
We definately have been sold out on this one, as I said before, Assange would be advised to hotfoot it down to the Russian Embassy and seek political assylum, otherwise, he will juse dissapear, and Gillard wont lift a finger to help, maybe even invited to the White House for praise.
Roxon is going to give a lecture on human rights? While we jail Indonesian children in adult prisons in breach of the law and Gillard says he is an adult even though his parents, the school and the Indonesia authorities say he is 16?
While she jails babies as a “security risk”, and while the government still whinge about sending refugees to Malaysia to die, while we are paying Indonesia to torture refugees to death and deport them for us without due process of the law?
I think I want to puke.
But the unions are backing Assange as a Senate rep.
@kennethrobinson2: But what happens when he pisses the Russians off? That’s when he’ll really ‘disappear’.
You know, we used to joke about being the 51st state of the USA, now it seems it really has happened.
We have arrived, 1984.
Unless you, I mean you, take some action to defend your so called freedoms, we will all lose them. It may already be too late.
Like the “war on drugs” which has created two industries, one that profits from selling drugs and one that profits from drugs being illegal, so has “security” become an industry that feeds on deliberately generated fear. This industry has no barriers to its feeding frenzy and the “rule of law” has disappeared. In a world of artificially contrived fear personal freedoms including that of speech, have gone.
@MARILYN - I watched a documentary re asylum seekers - SBS! You were on it I believe. Now I have a face to go with your wonderful and gutsy comments.
I agree with you about our appalling human rights history/reality. I take my hat off to Indonesia re the young teenager and the marijuana issue. They took care of him like any decent country should care for kids - they’re just that? Kids! I was appalled when Rudd announced that he wasn’t going to sack any public servants etc. We still have Sandy ‘whatsisname’? Logan is it? in charge! A most unlikable person! Nothing’s changed at all!
I can only imagine the dangers these young teenagers are exposed to in an adult jail with some pretty horrible people!
If I hear just one more time how ‘concerned and sad’ they are about asylum seekers taking such risks? leaky boats etc? Of course, they should stay home and dodge our bullets every day and night? Much more respectable if they die that way! Then, we don’t have to even mention that they ever existed!
Not surprising that most of the recent arrivals(last year included) are from Afghanistan. Apparently, last year was the most bloody/violent/dangerous year to date!
I’d take the risk with my babies, and leave! Any way anywhere!
Like you, I want to puke too! I’m ashamed, very ashamed! I recall Julia Gillard and Nicola Roxon in Opposition! Where have those people gone to?
And the best SB can do is once again engage in childish political point scoring! I’m sure she’s Christopher Pyne! the little poodle who just keeps on yapping around peoples’ heels?)
@ LIZ45
I’ve suspected that for a while now
I also note how Annabelle Crabb was scathing of Assange on the drum yesterday just after the presenter fulminated about what a fizzer his first show was.
It’s interesting how many of our journalists castigate Assange for his big ego. After all they are modesty personified themselves for the most part.
@ some dude,
Id rather take my chances with the Ruskies than the Yanks.
Leaving aside the tinfoil hit aspects, what exactly happened? Both this story and Fairfax report that she tweeted that she was told that she would need High Commission permission to travel to Australia (despite the fact that, as DIAC pointed out, this is completely wrong - and something that, as a lawyer, she would presumably have known).
The next part of the story is that she’s on her way to Australia. What happened in between? Did she contact the High Commission? Did the authorities at Heathrow contact the High Commission? How was she allowed to travel despite being “inhibited”?
Your story says that “approval was secured from the Australian High Commission”. Since the High Commission has no power to prevent an Australian citizen returning to Australia, how did it grant approval?
If she was stopped “at the behest of … a foreign agency”, what difference would “approval” from the Australian High Commission have made?
This is up there with the “ASIO stole my iPhone charge” story.
Sorry- “tinfoil hat”.
@Stiofan: So you need to be a lawyer to return home as an Australian citizen now. A curious new qualification.
@Meski
Your comment appears to be the result of a misreading of what I wrote.
Roxon is giving a lecture on human rights? After hearing her limp comments regarding Assange on Q&A one deduces the thrust of her speech will be ANTI-human rights.
Unless an Australian is charged with drug smuggling in a foreign land our government is disinterested.
@DAVIDK - And yet, Julian Assange was the recipient of the ‘top award’ at the Walkleys?
Annabel is very chummy with both side of the conservative side of politics. I don’t mind her as a person, she can be very engaging and entertaining. (However, I won’t be praising her again).
I watched most of the TV talk/eat shows - even the one with Pyne and Vanstone! It gave me a laugh! Fancy the revelation that Pyne can’t cook? Now why doesn’t that surprise me? Probably can’t change nappies either!
What newspapers in Australia did NOT print or cover Wikileaks stories? What hypocrites they are. Why isn’t Murdoch in the dock for example? The ABC/SBS and many the commercial channels (although I haven’t seen it on commercial TV) played the Iraqi horrors including the brutal murders etc of little kids? And yet Assange is treated like a monster? I shakes my head!
This requires reading between the lines. The deal is done: Assange will be ‘rendered’ to the US and the watch list on his lawyers’ and associates’ movements is preparatory to shutting them down the minute he is nabbed.
Traitorous conduct from Gillard and the ALP.
Thank you Liz. I took years to get any media interested in the facts of Mazhar Ali and the family instead of the lies and bullshit the media fed the public.
After they were deported with the help of the ALP’s Laurie Ferguson he wrote and told me “it doesn’t matter if they die in the snow, they were not genuine”.
The baby was only 14 months old, born here and we sent them in December to the coldest winter on record and without warm clothes and money.
They survived because within one week of my appeal for cash people around the country sent $40,000.
My first reaction - it’s a fabrication. The term “inhibited person” I’ve never heard of in connection with border control.
I’m bemused by some of the comments that the tweeted incident generated.
STIOFAN’s made the most sense.
Then, if it was not a fabrication, maybe it was a ploy by a Border Authority (generic term) person to delay a Julian Assange supporter either for devilment or for leaking her travel to Oz either to the media or to the Australian High Commission.
I’m inclined to accept the DFAT reply.
I expect the reply to Crikey from the Brits to be just as anodyne.
I’m not the most outgoing sort myself, in fact many aspects of my personality even I would describe as “inhibited”. Does this mean I shouldn’t ever leave the country for fear of being refused re-entry? Come to that am I about to be kicked out for being inhibited?
Given CRIKEY’s previous revelation about “labor’s ” (sic) refusal to tell the public what its good mates the USA have got in mind for Australian citizen Assange — its in the public interest that the public not know — Robinson’s treatment makes a lot of sense. If its not the Australian government putting Ms Robinson on a no-fly list, I suspect the Canberra pen-pusherocracy has spoken to their good American friends.[I assume they are capable of such even though Mark Arbib no longer makes regular stoolie pigeon flights to the Canberra Embassy].As revealed by @GAPOT M/s Robinson is a strong supporter of dissidents — known to Indonesia as rebels — in WEST PAPUA so this and her legal advocacy for Assange would likely get her on some freedom-and-democracy government S**T list.
It should be amusing to hear what that recycled union bureaucrat currently occupying the Attorney-General portfolio has to say, as she has — unsurprisingly — recently been sledging Assange.
The word LABORAL was coined to indicate the total similarity is Australia’s Tweedledumb/Tweedledumber major partier. Which means we won’t hear a peep from Abbo about Australian citizen Robinson’s rights.
“Inhibited person”. Pure American tortured syntax. However, I feel sufficiently uninhibited to tell Americans to fück off out of our country.
Does anyone know where Arbib, went?.
Maybe he works full time at the CIA, surely he wasnt rendered!
@MARILYN - What can be said about Ferguson’s comment. Disgusting is the word. I was a bit confused between this story and the Baqtiari’s(spelling?)Their youngest child was born in captivity. Rose’s husband was not allowed to be there. (I’ve read of women in labour being handcuffed with a guard(male or female? who cared?) in attendance? I’ve also read of women not giving permission, but a caesarian being performed - one woman gave birth to twin girls under this appalling condition/s.)
Rose and the baby were kept in a motel room with 24 hour guards for months - her other children were brought to her once or? a week. Through public scrutiny/opposition, she was reunited with her children out of jail. I believe one of the major churches was involved. The authorities didn’t believe that Rose was an Afghani. Vanstone was begged to wait, as the lawyers had organised for someone to go there and get proof - they did! But too late! That family were sent in a chartered plane just before Xmas day! I cried - a lot! Anger, sorrow and shame!
We have no right to gloat about our so-called strong views about human rights - none at all!
I’m glad the money was raised. Restores my faith in humanity! The Fergusons have never had a good reputation re caring for human beings. Look at the attitude to dumping nuclear waste in the Top End! Racist attitudes and the nuclear industry/tests etc go hand in hand I’m afraid!
Thank you for all you do! I’m in awe! You restore my faith!
KR2 - it would be nice to think that he HAD been rendered down to a barrel of fat but unfortunately he is still Langley’s man-in-Canberra.
DIAC’s shill, Sandman “nuttin here, move along” Logan, is irrelevant in this matter as DIAC has no power over Oz citizens, that is solely a matter for DFAT, on secondment from the Septics.
Robinson has often referred to the letter of threat she received from the US justice (SIC!) Dept spelling out in two pages of boilerplate how her freedom of movement (and, should she be extra naughty, her akshal freedom) could be affected should she persist in being a lawyer for Assange or otherwise prove annoying to the Hegemon.
Yoohoo! forget the restPOLICEMAN MACCRUISKEEN is on the money!!!
Interesting !
A question that came to my mind too was, on what authority was Robinson allowed to proceed? No doubt the answer will come in due course.
@Policeman MacCruiskeen Posted Thursday, 19 April 2012 at 4:35 pm
Scary stuff all right you have nailed it.
Robinson was told she was an “inhibited person” by someone at the airport. The words can have just been the words the person at the airport chose.
The UK government is putting Australia citizens on travel restriction lists at the request of the USA? If that is true then that is very disturbing.
If this is some sort of sign that Assange is going to be extradited to the USA then this must have been a bungle on the UK’s behalf. Also, if Robinson has been in the USA recently then why did she have no trouble getting in and out from there?
What I don’t understand is the Labor government’s complete acquiescence on this issue to foreign powers. The ALP is facing political annihilation and a rapidly declining primary vote and these sorts of issues is what makes Labor voters become Green votes. While voters who switch primary vote from Labor to Green are never going to preference the Coalition parties, the ALP can’t just dismiss this trend if the Greens start seriously challenging more lower house seats in the future.
Ha, this conundrum is easily answered. Thanks to my connections with ASIO I can inform you Ms Robinson has invented the episode.
Proof? If she really believed it had happened she would be filing a Privacy request (seeking all information held on a person) with the High Commission and DFAT. She won’t being doing that because she knows it didn’t happen and there will be no record at the Australian High Commission of any incident regarding her departure from Heathrow. Its a common tactic with Wikileaks associated people to always claim harrassment at airports and yet puzzlingly never lay an official complaint about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I support wikileaks, but I am not blind to the fact that it seems to attract the biggest collection of tools to be found outside of a Mitre 10 store.
Regards,
The boys from ASIO.
@Stiofan: Well, I still read it as an implication that you’d need to be a lawyer to get out of it. Or have the relevant legislation at your fingertips.
And, @Julian Fitz: argument from false authority? Probably not, more likely irony, I guess.
There is something remarkable “fishy” about this whole story. In the absence of any real legal reason, ie, you are a fugitive, no country or authority can stop you returning home to the country of your origin as a citizen. It makes no sense to declare to someone that they are an “inhibited” person and then let them proceed. I have never, in all my own years of bureaucratic involvement at many levels, even heard of the term “inhibited”. Don’t completely dismiss the possibility that Ms Robinson’s perception of the event (if there was an event) may not necessarily be related to what actually occurred. Let’s wait for more detail to emerge. (or not).
POLICEMAN MACCRUISKEEN is on the right trail. Also Robinson would have been prevented from speaking at the same forum as Roxon. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
western democracies wouldn’t bully or intimidate dissenters, just like they wouldn’t use militarised police forces agains peaceful protesters, hold citizens in indefinite detention without charge, or confiscate private property without due process or compensation.
our “democratic” elected governments are starting to behave like the authoritarian regimes that they used to criticise in the communist USSR et. al. History would suggest that this will not end well for us, the citizens, at least in the short term.
Amazing. Australians are an ocean away, face no real risk telling the US government to stuff it - yet they roll over.
Believed my own countrymen had gone soft….
If one can’t be free from creeps in Australia - then where?
POLICEMAN MACCRUISKEEN.. has the vessel with the pessel that is true.
@Liz45, could you please display the link to the SBS doco that features the beloved Shepherd Marilyn? Thanx honey!
@GREG JONES - It was on SBS on January 24 2012 and called, ‘The Man Who Jumped’. Here’s the link - http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/855/
Sadly, it has expired, but maybe you can buy it from SBS or maybe Marilyn has a suggestion. I recorded it and only watched it a few days ago!
***************
Unlike some people here, I’m not surprised that Jennifer was treated in this manner. It all goes back to Blair/Bush/Howard and the draconian Laws and horrific treatment of people who they deemed was ‘suspicious’ or a ‘security threat’ real or IMAGINED?
A really good documentary about the US after 9/11 including the PATRIOT Act, and the involvement of the CIA and FBI on real or imagined ‘suspicious persons’? It’s called, ‘Unconstitutional - the War on Civil Liberties’. This is the link - http://freedocumentaries.org/int.php?filmID=90
This site has heaps of docos that you can watch for free - apart from what your IP charges etc. I’ve watched lots and this one is a real eye opener. Some may be shocked, I was! Innocent people, particularly of Middle Eastern appearance were jailed, flown out in secret at night, for ever, and the climate at the time was appalling. I hasten to add, that these were not the only people singled out. The Bush regime wanted local govts to report on people, and people were questioned in libraries for being ‘interested’ in harmless topics. True! I kid you not!
Sit in the library looking at a reference book etc on Martin Luther King, or the Middle East, and then feel the presence of 2 burly FBI people at your side! A man was arrested for wearing a Peace badge or T shirt!
I’m not surprised by the subject at hand, and as the Labor Govt has embraced, broadened almost every questionable invasion/imposition/investigation etc of innocent people, it shouldn’t surprise anyone else either! Look at the lengths they went to, including lying in the Court to ‘make’ a case against Dr Haneef purely for electoral advantage! It was just appalling - but not by US or British standards. Britain is responsible for the rendition of its citizens to either the Middle East or torture jails in Europe, and like Bush and Howard, lied their heads off! Downer (allegedly) lied about Mandouh Habib and David Hicks!
The ease of being able to see first hand what these pillars of democracy have been up to is the reason why the Obama Administration wanted to curtail our access to the internet, and KNOWLEDGE! They’re s**t scared of the material Wikileaks has been given, and this is one way to stop it. thankfully, there was so much opposition, this time it failed! We are NOT entitled to the truth
I’m probably under surveillance myself - since knowledge is such a threat! I’m not bothered at all! But????if I disappear???
Whats the big fuss,another clive joke on the country.
@Liz45
I understand all of the above only too well. Seriously, I may even be under surveillance myself.
I just started to write you about some very strange circumstances that I have experienced over the last few months, but then realized that I can’t put this stuff up on an open forum like this and scrubbed it.
I said strange circumstances, no, that down-plays it. They were actually very intimidating and threatening.
Nuff…thanks for the links.
LIZ & GREG J: The truly horrific implication of the Jennifer Robinson ‘affaire’ is she was able to get the attention she deserved. What happens when a person having no access to publicity and no powerful friends is detained? That is the question.
GREG: Re surveillance. As I understand it all correspondence to Crikey is automatically surveyed by ASIO, or its modern equivalent. For me this is a change from the time I was on the Save the Kangaroo committee and all my telephone calls were monitored. It was at a time when it was easy to hear the sounds of another telephone listening in a fairly harsh clicking followed by a spooky (no pun intended) sort of sound of a ‘phone working in a tunnel. This went on for a period of over a year.
Cheers Venise
How right you are Venise. Poor little buggars who look Middle eastern get carted off for questioning. However the positive side is that because Jennifer is a public figure, we all get to know about her experience.
I’d say I’d have an ASIO file. Organising anti nuclear rallies; workers comp; peace rallies (now nobody is as suspect as a person marching for peace???). Pro a woman’s right to choose, may day etc. One day I’ll go to Canberra and get it! Worth a laugh I reckon. A very dangerous person I am!
The Wikileak’ s revelations have set in motion an escalating attack on the basic human rights of not only the traditional enemies targeted by the military/industrial complex since 911 but the very citizens of the countries the “complex” was set up to protect. We are all enemies now - especially peace activists.
I’m sure ASIO is a keen observer of commentators on articles like this and anxiously awaiting the moment when they can pounce on someone who oversteps the line.