Writer Masha Gessen has said the Australian government has “functionally denied” them a visa, after delays and a “last minute” request for further documents meant Gessen was unable to board their scheduled flight to Australia this past weekend.
The Department of Home Affairs’ delay apparently stems from concerns over Gessen’s recent conviction in Russia. In mid-July, Gessen — a regular contributor to outlets such as The New Yorker and The New York Times — was sentenced in absentia to eight years imprisonment by a Moscow court after having written about alleged Russian war crimes during the nation’s invasion of Ukraine. The court claimed Gessen had spread “false information”.
“The Russian government’s persecution of me has one purpose: to make me feel unfree even though I am living in exile and they can’t currently jail me. What they can try to do is make it hard for me to move around the world,” Gessen said in a statement. “I am shocked that the first allies the Russians have found in this quest to constrain me are the Australian authorities, who have functionally denied me a visa.”
“This is exactly what the Kremlin hoped would happen,” Gessen added.
Simon Longstaff, executive director of the Ethics Centre, which presents the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, said Home Affairs was seeking, at “the last minute”, a US Police and FBI check “where no offence has ever been committed”.
“It would seem that the sole reason for the department seeking a police and FBI clearance has been the open declaration of a conviction for a ‘crime’ that all the world knows to be bogus and politically motivated by an authoritarian regime determined to silence its critics — by any means,” he said.
“Perhaps the most perverse aspect of this decision lies in the fact that Masha Gessen’s criticism of Russia directly reflects the formal position of both the Australian and US governments.”
Gessen’s writing, on Russia and Israel in particular, has frequently been a subject of controversy. Speaking to Crikey earlier this month about the risks their work posed to their safety, Gessen conceded they were always working with “incomplete information”:
[When I did that reporting] I didn’t know about the extent of extradition treaties that they were going to be signing, and also about the extent the assassination machinery that is operating outside of Russia … I’m not saying I would have made different decisions. I don’t think so because what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world at that point was write the piece about war crimes … And, you know, I’m not in prison there. There have been more than 250 people charged under those same censorship laws, and some of them are actually serving actual prison time in Russia, they are in danger. I’m at risk. I think there’s a difference.
Crikey asked Home Affairs whether it viewed convictions like the one handed down for Gessen in Moscow as part of a credible process. We were told that “for privacy reasons, the department cannot comment on individual cases, so unfortunately we can’t be of any further assistance on this matter”.
