savethesheikh.com

On June 3rd, 2010, more than 1000 of us went to Canberra to voice our protest about the treatment of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, who, after 16 years of peaceful living in Australia is about to be deported for reasons that the Australian authorities will not divulge.  For a sildeshow of the whole album, click here.

Shortly after this photo was taken, the officer asked the girl to take down her sign

For a sildeshow of the whole album, click here.

The following is an open letter from the supporters of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The Hon. Kevin Rudd, MP
Prime Minister of Australia
Australian Parliament
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2600

June 3, 2010

Dear Prime Minister

Re: Request to prevent the deportation of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei in accordance with the communication of the United Nations Human Rights Committee of 21 April, 2010.

We are supporters of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, a moderate Iranian cleric who leads the 1500-member Imam Husain Islamic Centre in Earlwood and is the elected head of the local Interfaith Committee.

As you will be aware, Dr Leghaei and his family have lived peacefully in Australia for 16 years. His application for Permanent Residency in Australia has been denied due to two Adverse Security Assessments issued by ASIO in 1997 and 2004.

A leading proponent of interfaith dialogue and religious tolerance in Sydney, Dr Leghaei strenuously denies he has ever been a threat to Australia’s national security.

Contrary to the right to a fair hearing enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Australia is a signatory, Dr Leghaei has never been informed of the nature of the allegations against him, either by ASIO or in any of the court proceedings he has brought to challenge ASIO’s assertion. In one of these hearings, a judge of the Federal Court of Australia observed that Dr Leghaei’s right to procedural fairness had been reduced to ‘nothingness’.

Australia’s failure to guarantee a fair trial is at odds with much of the liberal democratic world: in Britain and Europe, for example, human rights law requires that a person always be told the substance of the allegations. The denial of a fair hearing is also foreign to our ancient common law tradition, which requires that a person can challenge the evidence against them in an adversarial process.

Where a person is unable to see or test the evidence, it cannot be determined whether they are actually a risk to national security or not. Deporting Dr Leghaei in such circumstances would be internationally unlawful.

On April 21, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a request, under rule 92 of its rules of procedure, that the Australian Government not deport Dr Leghaei and his accompanying dependents to Iran while their case is under consideration by the committee.

However in contravention of this request, the Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans, announced on May 17 that Dr Leghaei would not be granted a visa and that he was expected to make preparations to leave the country by June 28.

This breach of Dr Leghaei’s human rights has provoked concern among the international human rights community. Support for his case has now been received from, amongst others: Bishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town; Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, Bishop of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon; Máiread Corrigan-Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Dr Chandra Muzaffar, Malaysian political scientist; Professor Hans Köchler, President of the International Progress Organization; Dr Norman Finkelstein, American political scientist, and Bishop George Browning, retired Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn.

Dr Leghaei and his family have also received thousands of letters of support from members of the Anglican, Catholic, Indigenous and Muslim communities. His removal from Australia will result in the closure of the Centre and deprive 1500 Muslims of a leadership which preaches tolerance and peace.

Today more than 1,000 concerned Australians from different community backgrounds have travelled to Canberra to deliver this letter to you.

We applaud your Government’s stated commitment to human rights and global governance. At a time when it is more important than ever to build bridges between people of different faiths, we call on you to ensure that the principles of human rights and the right to a fair trial are upheld in this individual case.

Therefore we respectfully request that you provide an assurance to Dr Leghaei that he will not be removed from Australia until the UN Human Rights Committee has finally determined his case on its merits.

As Greens Candidate for Grayndler Sam Byrne travelled to Canberra to join the rally in support of Sheikh Mansour, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam submitted these questions in Parliament to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, asking him why no details of an ASIO assessment have ever been provided to the Sheikh:

1. Did the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (the committee) write to the Australian Government on 21 April 2010 requesting that Sheikh Mansour Leghaei not be deported until it had considered his case.
2. Has the Government responded formally to the letter from the Chief of the UN human rights treaty division who wrote on behalf of the committee.
3. Has Sheikh Mansour Leghaei or his legal representatives been provided with a summary or an indication of the elements of the evidence the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has collected against him.
4. In this regard, how does the Government understand Australia’s obligations under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, taking into account the committee’s General Comment No. 33, paragraph 19 (CCPR/C/GC/33, dated 5 November 2009).
5. Has the Government noted instances where the committee has expressed its indignation and found that the state has committed a grave breach of its obligations under the Optional Protocol, such as the committee’s Report of the human rights committee (UN General Assembly Official Record, 49th Sess., Supp. No. 40, UN Doc. A/49/40, vol. 1 (1994), para. 411) and Piandiong v. The Philippines (Communication No. 869/1999, para. 7.4).
6. Will the Government provide an assurance to Sheikh Mansour Leghaei that he will not be removed from Australia until the committee has finally determined his case on the merits, as required by the committee’s interim measures request of 21 April 2010.
7. Did the current Attorney General write two letters of support for Sheikh Mansour Leghaei describing him as ‘an asset to the Muslim community in particular and the Australian community at large’.

Senator Scott Ludlum

The following is a letter from Father John Pearce – Parish Priest at St Brigid’s, Marrickville (the largest church in our region) to Australian MP’s

Together with two local Anglican Priests and some members of our three Parishes, on Thursday 5th June I travelled by bus convoy to Canberra for a Rally in support of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei.

Mansour is an Imam neighbour of mine and President of our Marrickville Inter-Faith Round Table.  He will be deported in 3 weeks unless our Federal Government backs down. He has been given a negative assessment by ASIO after 16 years of peaceful work in the community. He is the only fluent English speaking Imam in Sydney. He preaches in English, thus has a large young multicultural Islamic Community. Our convoy of 14 buses from Sydney and Melbourne had many young people as our hosts and leaders. If our Christian Churches had such numbers of young people, we would be overflowing with good Disciples.

After standing in Solidarity with yesterday outside Parliament, I found a lot of the young people talk in gratitude on the bus back, and of how much he has influenced their lives and the lives of others. It was most inspiring. I now look forward to inviting some of them here for a dinner conversation with some of our young people for the St Brigid’s Parish 2nd Annual Ifta Dinner I will host in August.

Despite approaches to the PM’s office, neither he nor any of his ministers were available to join us on the lawns opposite Parliament. Neither did the Opposition. The local Greens Candidate for Grayndler at least travelled with us and participated. Also, the AFP informed us that neither the Sheikh nor rally participants could enter the Parliamentary Building to even hand his letter of appeal to the Front Desk. The young people did such a great job with crowd movement, the AFP had little to do.

As you may know, one of my concerns is this comes 90 years after a Passionist Priest from my Parish of Marrickville was deported for opposing conscription during WWI, as did many of our Bishops and citizens. He was German born, British educated, finished school at Parramatta, yet deemed a threat to the State. While his father became a British subject, he forgot to put his son and wife on the papers. After internment at Holsworthy where he acted as Chaplain to other Internees, he was deported and lived the next 7years in USA and England. (The weren’t afraid of him). He died in London in 1928.  His name was Fr Charles Jerger CP (google that for good reports).

The Sheikh asks for natural justice, ie, to know what he is accused of and the right to defend himself in law. He has been told that as a non citizen, he does not have any of those rights. But we know he has human and God given rights.

Meanwhile, the UN has asked for a stay on deportation so that they can investigate this case. We wait on that.

As a life long Labour voter, yesterday I found myself joining the chant of Shame Rudd Shame. I now wonder how I should vote at the next election. The days of the Whitlam Government in 1972-75 were short, but at least that PM brought social justice into the open and applied it.

We seem to have reverted to being a secret society once again.

Thanks for reading this. I pray that we become a country where true justice is given to all people, citizen and non citizen, as they are all God’s children.

Perhaps you might like to write to the PM. His deportation date is June 27.

John
Fr John Pearce CP
Parish Priest

Join us on Thursday June 3rd at 11.30am in Canberra.

Full details can be found at CanberraRally.com and you can download the poster with the details here.