Rita Panahi: Vile traitors who join terror groups have no place in Australia
If you travel overseas to join a terror group, you lose the right to call yourself an Australian and are no longer welcome back to the country you betrayed, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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If you travel overseas to join a terror group, you lose the right to call yourself an Australian.
The government’s priority should be to protect the public, and that is precisely what happened when Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton revoked the citizenship of Islamic State member, fighter and recruiter, Neil Prakash.
The Melbourne-born traitor and terrorist went to Syria in 2013, where he was known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, and remained committed to attacking Australia.
Prakash is not only suspected of involvement in Australian terror plots, including the plan to behead a police officer on Anzac Day, but he also featured in IS propaganda and urged jihadis to launch lone-wolf attacks against Australian targets.
And yet there are do-gooders-who-do-little-actual-good advocating for the “right” of this battle-hardened Islamist to return to the country he betrayed.
Activist lawyer Greg Barns was outraged that Dutton, who he claimed had “contempt for the rule of law”, hadn’t first sought approval from Fiji, where Prakash’s father was born and where he also held citizenship.
“It seems extraordinary that they wouldn’t talk to the Fijians to make sure,” he said.
But then again, a lawyer who accuses the Liberal Party of “abusing children” and throws around the word “Nazi” with abandon isn’t one to go to for considered commentary.
Then there’s human rights lawyer and refugee advocate Julian Burnside, QC, who tweeted: “Prakash may be bad, but #Dutton is dangerous. Cancelling Prakash’s citizenship makes it hard for him to travel, even to challenge the cancellation.”
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Prakash may be bad? Is that an early entry for the understatement of 2019? This is a monster who saw the evil of IS, the indiscriminate slaughter of “infidels”, the ethnic genocide of the Yazidis, all the beheadings, torture, rape and slavery, and instead of being repelled by it, he chose to devote his life to the caliphate.
The so-called progressives who try to minimise the barbaric savagery of IS or want to paint those who joined the caliphate as naive or marginalised young men should familiarise themselves with the carnage the group left in its wake.
Does Burnside really think most Australians give a continental about Prakash having difficulty travelling?
Prakash represents an ongoing threat if he is allowed to return, even if it is to face charges and serve a prison term. The risk of him radicalising young men while behind bars should not be discounted. He is only 27 years old, he faces charges in Turkey that carry a 15-year maximum jail term, but it has been reported that he is likely to receive a 7½-year penalty. That means even after facing charges and serving a similar term in Australia, he would still be only in his 40s when released.
Thus far, a dozen terrorists have been stripped of their Australian citizenship but only Prakash has been named publicly.
Of course, the Fijians aren’t thrilled about being saddled with a battle-hardened Islamist but since Prakash was caught back in 2016, Fiji has had ample time to revoke any rights to citizenship he has through his father.
Frankly, I doubt many Australians care whether Fiji, which is a beneficiary of our largesse in the South Pacific, is happy with the decision or not.
For the record, Dutton said in a statement last week: “The government has been in close contact with the government of Fiji since Mr Prakash was determined to have lost his citizenship.”
Lebanese-Australian Khaled Sharrouf is thought to be one of the 12 to have lost his citizenship, but he was killed in an air strike in 2017 before the human rights lawyers could jump to his defence.
Sharrouf was among the most notorious of the 230 Australians who have gone to Syria or Iraq to join terror groups in the past six years.
He appeared in gruesome IS videos beheading bound captors, and when in 2015 his nine-year-old son was pictured holding up the head of a decapitated IS victim, it was an image that shocked the world.
These are unprecedented times and crimes, and it’s with good reason that many Australians are more concerned about keeping our country safe than satisfying our obligations as signatories to the 1961 United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
As it stands, the government is only considering revoking the citizenship of terrorists who are dual citizens, but I would argue it is in the national interest to expand that to all terrorists who go overseas to join a recognised terror group. If they become “stateless”, then so be it. Why should we imperil our country for the sake of appeasing the UN Human Rights Council, which has among its members nations with deplorable human rights records including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Venezuela and Qatar.
There are about 100 Australian terrorists still in Syria and Iraq, plus another 40 who have already returned, and about 90 have died, according to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
It would be undeniably better for Australia if the 100 remaining fighters were never to return, whether they are dual citizens or not.
Those who are guilty of treason have forfeited the right to Australian citizenship and re-entry into the country.
— Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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