An Islamic cleric has left Australia after comments he made against homosexuality sparked a government review of his visa, officials said yesterday.
Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a British citizen, told Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) at Sydney Airport on Tuesday night that he had decided to leave after discussions with the Muslim community. He said he had not been asked to leave by the Australian government.
Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton said yesterday that the cleric left before Dutton’s department canceled his visa on Tuesday night.
“This individual has decided to leave of his own accord last night which we welcome and it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for him to return back to our country,” Dutton told Radio 5AA.
Sekaleshfar came under investigation over a newspaper report about comments he had made about homosexuality during a lecture at the University of Michigan in 2013.
The Australian newspaper reported that Sekaleshfar said: “Death is the sentence” for gay sex acts in public.
“Out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now,” he reportedly added.
Sekaleshfar told ABC his comments had been taken out of context. He expressed sympathy for the families of those killed in the Orlando, Florida, nightclub and denied his comments could have inspired such a mass shooting.
“No speech — especially when you’re not inciting any hatred and it was given three years ago — that would never lead to such a massacre,” he said. “That animal, they are connecting me to him [shooter Omar Mateen]. Not at all. He was an ISIS [Islamic State] sympathizer, a follower of [Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, these people are criminals.”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that he would investigate why Sekaleshfar had not been placed on a watch list.
“The moment that this man’s presence and what he had said was drawn to our attention, the minister [Dutton] and I spoke about it, the minister acted decisively and his visa was revoked,” Turnbull told Radio 2GB.
Sekaleshfar arrived in Sydney on Tuesday last week. Dutton said he had ordered the visa review after becoming aware on Monday of the cleric’s presence in Australia.
A gun attack on a gay nightclub in Florida that left 49 dead has focused Australia’s election campaign on the threat posed by extremists. Australians go to the polls on July 2.
Turnbull said that if his conservative coalition is re-elected, he would propose legislation to ensure that people convicted of terrorism offenses could remain in prison after serving their sentences if a court ruled that they continued to pose a threat.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten questioned whether cost-cutting in border security had enabled Sekaleshfar to obtain a visa.
“This government has allowed ... a visa to be issued to someone with despicable, abhorrent views of gay hate, of homophobia of the most violent and vile nature,” Shorten told reporters. “The government needs to explain how this fellow got in.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia