On August 5, the day before Jesuit lawyer and human rights advocate Frank Brennan was due to leave for Nauru, his visa was cancelled by Nauru's acting-chief secretary. The reason given for the cancellation was that Father Brennan's request to enter Nauru was "not conductive of parish or pastoral work with the Catholic mission".
Brennan's visa had been issued the previous day. The purpose of his visit as stated in a letter to Nauru's parish priest, Joseph Kanimea, was to "to get some understanding of the local situation in Nauru with the asylum seekers who have been sent to Nauru for processing from Australia". The parish priest had guaranteed authorities that Father Brennan was to be his guest, and that he would be responsible for Father Brennan during his visit.
The sudden cancellation of Brennan's visa raises serious questions. In an August 7 letter to immigration minister Philip Ruddock, Brennan compared his intended visit to Nauru with a previous visit to East Timor: "In 1992, I was denied access to East Timor by the Indonesian authorities until they received a letter from the local church authorities attesting that I was their guest and that they would be responsible for me during my visit. On production of such a letter, I was allowed entrance to East Timor one year after the Santa Cruz massacre. In stark contrast, the production of such a letter is not adequate to permit entrance to Nauru."
"If Mr Ruddock or other officers of the Australian government are not in a position to assist with requests for reasonable access to Nauru in the future, Australian citizens like myself will be left with the justified perception that we are denied access because the Nauruan government is anxious to implement the will of the Australian government that Australian citizens not be granted ready access to Nauru while there are asylum seekers being kept there in detention", Brennan said.
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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