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Iranian author faces death when deported from Australia: advocate
SYDNEY - An Iranian artist and democracy campaigner facing deportation from Australia as an illegal immigrant is likely to be killed if he is returned to his native country, a refugee advocacy group claimed on Wednesday. The group, Project SafeCom, said Ardeshir Gholipour, who has been in Australian detention centres for almost five years, attempted suicide after learning his bid for a humanitarian visa had been refused by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone.SafeCom spokesman Jack Smit said Gholipour was taken to hospital last Friday after overdosing on sleeping tablets at the Baxter detention centre in South Australia, but had since been returned to Baxter. Gholipour, an author for democracy movements in Iran, arrived in Australia in March 2000 and was initially held at the Port Hedland detention centre in Western Australia. Smit said Gholipour had been imprisoned for 21 months from 1987 at the notorious Evin Prison in northern Teheran for distributing pamphlets on behalf of the Iran Freedom Movement, and also wrote articles for the Left Union for Democracy in Iran. He had participated in student demonstrations in Iran in July 1999 and subsequently fled the country in fear of his life. "Mr Gholipour should have immediately gained asylum and protection when he arrived in Australia five years ago," Smit said. "Instead, and solely because he had the audacity to arrive on Australian shores unannounced and uninvited, Australia detained him. "Now, through departmental blindness and stupidity, Amanda Vanstone has announced and informed him that he is to start packing his bags because she intends to deport him -- either willingly or forcibly. "Mr Gholipour, if deported, certainly awaits reprisals, if not immediate killing, by the Mullahs for his eloquent work as a writer for the democracy movement in Iran." A spokesman for Vanstone declined to comment about Gholipour saying: "We don't comment on individual cases." Posted by: Steve White 2005-01-19 |
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