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Iranian author faces death if deported from Australia

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 said 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 Tehran 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.” The minor Australian Democrats party also appealed to Vanstone to exercise her discretion by not ordering the deportation of Gholipour who, it said, was recognised by the PEN International Writers in Prison Committee as being at risk if deported to Iran.

Democrats immigration spokesman Senator Andrew Bartlett said Gholipour’s case has been investigated by PEN, which believed he had a real reason to fear persecution should he be repatriated.

“It would be negligence on Australia’s part to forcibly repatriate Mr Gholipour,” Bartlett said. A spokesman for Vanstone refused to discuss the Gholipour case, saying: “We don’t comment on individual cases.” afp

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