Det danske Fredsakademi

Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 13. september 2005 / Timeline September 13, 2005

12. September 2005, 14. September 2005

09/13/2005
Expelled activist asks QC to dig for answers
By Elisabeth Wynhausen and John Kerin
The Australian
September 13, 2005 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16583967%255E2702,00.html
THREE days after he was detained as a "threat to national security" and put in solitary confinement, American peace activist Scott Parkin will consent to his deportation from Australia, but he won't go quietly.
Mr Parkin has instructed barrister Julian Burnside QC to lodge an appeal with the Migration Review Tribunal to review why his six-month visitor's visa was cancelled by the Department of Immigration and to force Canberra to reveal its security assessment on him.
Yesterday, the Howard Government again declined to detail why it had sought Mr Parkin's deportation.
Mr Burnside said Mr Parkin would leave the country, otherwise he would be liable for the cost of keeping him in jail.
But he said his client wanted to know what he had done to warrant deportation. "If all Mr Parkin has done to be assessed a security risk is to peacefully protest his opinions, then we are in serious trouble," he said.
Since Saturday, when he was picked up at a cafe in Brunswick by four federal police and at least one immigration official, Mr Parkin, a 35-year old community college history teacher from Houston, Texas, has been in solitary confinement in a Melbourne prison.
In Australia for the past six weeks, Mr Parkin had given workshops in both Brisbane and Sydney about the campaign against Houston-based Halliburton, the US company that picked up the lion's share of the multi-billion-dollar reconstruction projects in Iraq. US Vice-President Dick Cheney is a former Halliburton executive.
Mr Parkin was on his way to the workshop in Melbourne when he was arrested.
Another of Mr Parkin's lawyers, Marika Dias, said: "DIMIA was notified that Mr Parkin had been found to be a threat to national security precisely one day after he declined to go for an interview with ASIO."

09/13/2005

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