AhlulBayt News Agency

source : AFP
Friday

23 September 2011

8:30:00 PM
267594

Indonesia Deports Australian Activist for Interviewing Shia Muslim for HRW

An Australian conducting research into a minority Shia Muslim group in Indonesia has been deported, police confirmed today.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - "The Australian citizen was deported on Thursday by the immigration department," national police spokesperson Anton Bahrul Alam said.

"She will not be allowed to return to Indonesia for some time," he said, without specifying how long she would be banned for.

Police arrested Tirana Hassan from Adelaide on Monday in Sampang, East Java, where she was interviewing members of the Muslim Shia community for Human Rights Watch.

A consultant with the New York-based rights group, Andreas Harsono, was also arrested and the two were questioned by immigration for days in the city of Surabaya.

The two were not formally charged but Hassan was questioned because she did not have the correct researcher's visa.

"To the best of our knowledge she was not deported and she was advised by immigration authorities she was free to return," Australian embassy spokesman Ray Marcelo told AFP.

The Muslim Shia community - along with the Ahmadiyah minority Muslim sect and Christian groups - has faced increasing violence and intolerance by Wahhabis, the Islamic hard liners in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

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