Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 15:37:00 +1000
From: sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Steve Wright)
Subject: Lorenzo Ervin in Australia


I think these articles from the mainstream press here are self-explanatory.

_______________
Subject: LL: Lorenzo Ervin - Age & SMH articles
From: <owner-leftlink-AT-vicnet.net.au>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:37:27 +1000 (EST)

The Age, Melbourne
Tuesday 08 July 1997

Howard orders Panther visa probe

By KAREN MIDDLETON,  Canberra

The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, yesterday ordered an urgent
review of the decision to allow a convicted hijacker and former Black
Panther into Australia.

He said he was horrified to learn that Mr Lorenzo Kom'Boa Ervin
had been granted a visa and was visiting Australia. He said he had
demanded an explanation from the Department of Immigration.

"Apparently he misrepresented his past when he applied for a visa,"
Mr Howard said yesterday on Sydney radio. "He also used a
different surname...  I think somebody with that sort of background
ought not remain in Australia, and I hope he doesn't."

A spokesman for the department said last night that the matter was
being dealt with urgently.

But Mr Ervin said the claim was "absolutely false", and told ABC
television's 7.30 Report that he would mount a legal challenge if his
visa was revoked. He also threatened legal action against media
organisations that he said had sensationalised his message of black
radicalism.

"The thing about that is, they're grasping and grasping in a serious
way for some rationale to justify how I got into the country," he said.

He said he was in Australia to talk about "racism in Australia and
racism on an international scale". His visit, which began with a
speech in Brisbane last night, has been sponsored by an anarchist
organisation called Angry People.

When Mr Ervin's presence in Australia became public at the
weekend, the independent Queensland MP Ms Pauline Hanson said
he was a terrorist and should be deported. Yesterday, Mr Howard
expressed similar sentiments.

"I think it's quite wrong that somebody like that should have got into
the country in the first place," he said.

Visitors to Australia are required to disclose any criminal history in
their visa applications. Failure to do so is in some cases ground for
deportation.

The granting of a visa to Mr Ervin is embarrassing for the
Government, which has repeatedly refused visas to the controversial
British writer and historian Mr David Irving, and the Sinn Fein
leader Mr Gerry Adams.

Mr Ervin - who received two life sentences for hijacking an aircraft
from the US to Cuba in 1969 and was paroled in 1983 - said he had
visited 20 countries since that time without difficulty.


===========================================================

     Sydney Morning Herald
     Tuesday, July 8, 1997

Visa review for visiting black activist

     By JODIE BROUGH in Canberra

     Immigration officials are urgently investigating the entry into
     Australia of a former member of the Black Panthers - a United
     States black militant organisation - who was once jailed for
     hijacking a plane to Cuba.

     The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, said yesterday he had taken steps to
     have Mr Lorenzo Kom'Boa Ervin's visa investigated on the grounds
     that he had "misrepresented his past" when he applied for it and
     had used a different surname.

     Mr Ervin, jailed in the US for the 1969 hijacking and paroled in
     1983, was due to give a speech in Brisbane last night as part of a
     four-week lecture tour organised by a local anarchist group, Angry
     People.

     But the tour appeared to be in doubt last night, with the Brisbane
     venue, the West End Migrant Resource Centre, saying the speech was
     unlikely to be given.

     Mr Howard's intervention came as Ms Pauline Hanson's One Nation
     party complained Mr Ervin was "a known terrorist and gun runner"
     and demanded he be thrown out of the country.

     Mr Howard said it was "quite wrong that somebody like that should
     have got into the country in the first place and it's a result of
     the misrepresentation and the matter is being urgently investigated
     by the Immigration Department".

     "I think somebody with that sort of background oughtn't remain in
     Australia and I hope he doesn't," he told Radio 2GB. "I can't
     really say any more for legal reasons."

     Mr Ervin accused the media of reacting to his visit with hysteria
     and sensationalism.

     "I am certainly in favour of radical social change - I don't shrink
     from saying that, but of course I haven't come to Australia to blow
     up the downtown buildings or incite the Aborigines to revolution or
     race riots," he told ABC Radio.

     Mr Ervin said he had lectured in 20 countries without incident,
     suggesting he may pursue libel writs against some "conservative"
     media organisations.

     He was quoted by the Brisbane Courier-Mail as saying there were
     frightening similarities between Afro-Americans and Australian
     Aborigines, with both groups suffering from poverty and a high rate
     of incarceration.

     He was quoted as saying he wanted to talk about "how we aid our
     brothers and sisters here in Australia to deal with the abysmal
     condition that they are suffering from", describing his political
     objectives as "freedom for black people and the overthrow of the
     capitalist system".

     The national director of One Nation, Mr David Ettridge, said Mr
     Ervin should be deported immediately.

     "Sure we want freedom of speech and equality but we have to look at
     the purpose of his visit," Mr Ettridge said.

     He said he assumed that if Mr Ervin was talking to Aborigines
     "along the lines of white supremacists" that he "might be inciting
     them into some form of civil disobedience".

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