Activist fights jail detention and expulsion 

By JODIE BROUGH in Canberra

Former Black Panther, Mr Lorenzo Ervin, is expected to appear in the Immigration
Review Tribunal today to challenge his detention in a Brisbane maximum security
jail after the cancellation of his visa by the Federal Government.

The development came as the Opposition branded the Government's decision a
"heavy-handed overreaction" which had revealed serious inadequacies in
Immigration's policing of barriers intended to keep out criminals and terrorists.

The Acting Minister for Immigration, Senator Vanstone, said she expected Mr
Ervin to be deported tomorrow.

His lawyer, Mr Terry Fisher, alleged Mr Ervin had been assaulted at the Sir Arthur
Gorrie Centre by Immigration officials who had handcuffed him behind his back,
pushed his face into a wall and broken his glasses.

Senator Vanstone said she had not been advised about the complaint. She repeated
the Government's view that Mr Ervin was not welcome in Australia because of his
conviction for hijacking an aircraft to Cuba in 1969.

She said Immigration had put Mr Ervin on its alert list in May because it had learnt
he planned to enter Australia, but had failed to pick him up. 

She said the Government had yet to confirm Mr Ervin's claim to have received
executive clemency from President George Bush in 1988 but said clemency did not
expunge his criminal record as a "hijacker and a kidnapper".

Mr Ervin's imminent deportation was attacked by both ends of the political
spectrum.

The Free Speech Committee said it was "a frightening affront to free speech".
Former Labor maverick MP, Mr Graeme Campbell, accused the Prime Minister of
stifling the race debate.

A spokesman for the anarchist group Angry People, which invited Mr Ervin on a
four-week lecture tour, Mr Phil Dickinson, called for a day of action.
Demonstrations against the jailing would go ahead outside immigration offices in
Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne at 1pm today, he said. 

Mr Fisher said there had been a shocked reaction to Mr Ervin's jailing in the United
States and Europe and he anticipated international protests. Mr Ervin had visited 75
cities in 20 countries without incident since being paroled in 1983.

He expected Mr Ervin to come before the Immigration Review Tribunal today to
gain bail from jail. Mr Ervin would take Senator Vanstone's decision to the Federal
Court, where he would argue that she did not make her decision using "proper
material" and that he had been denied natural justice.

In Washington, the State Department said it had not heard of Mr Ervin. The Justice
Department knew nothing about any clemency.

A US Embassy official said yesterday that it had not been asked to intervene in the
matter and regarded it as "a private matter between Mr Ervin and the Government
of Australia".

The Free Speech Committee's secretary, Mr Daniel Brezniak, said free speech
involved letting unpopular people express unpopular views. It did not appear Mr
Ervin had come to Australia "preaching violence or hijacking".

An Aboriginal group, the Nyungah Circle of Elders, said Mr Ervin was on a
"peaceful mission" to talk to Aborigines about "our basic human rights being
violated time and time again by the Howard Government and the Opposition".

System failed twice 

For the former Black Panther, Mr Lorenzo Ervin, to enter Australia without a hint of
the controversy which has erupted around him this week, the Federal
Government's border controls had to fail twice.

Mr Ervin was granted a visa in Los Angeles through an electronic lodgment system
which can now be accessed by travel agents. That application would have been
scrambled through the alert system which is supposed to pick up undesirables.

But Immigration's electronic screening did not pick up Mr Ervin, apparently
because the alert list recorded a different middle name, Kom'boa, from that which
appeared on his passport. Nor did his date of birth appear, which might have tripped
the alarms.

The Immigration officials had a second chance to identify Mr Ervin when he filled
out a passenger entry card before his flight arrived in Australia.

His lawyers say he mistakenly omitted to answer a question in small type which
asked if he had a criminal record.

If he had answered the question truthfully, he would have been interviewed on
arrival by officials who would have decided whether he would be allowed to stay.
But he passed through the airport barrier without anyone asking him about his
failure to answer the question.

The department first got wind that there was a problem on Sunday, when a
newspaper interviewed Mr Ervin about his lecture tour and Mr Howard took up the
issue the next day.

In cancelling Mr Ervin's visa, the Government has used powers under the
Migration Act which are so wide that virtually anyone seeking to enter the country
could be departed on the grounds of character.

The Immigration Minister can refuse or cancel a visa on an array of grounds
including "character", "general conduct", criminal record or association with
someone thought to be a criminal.

Nonetheless the minister, Mr Ruddock, flagged in June that he wanted to make the
character test tougher by "placing the onus on the visa applicant to show they are of
good character, rather than the Government having to prove they are not of good
character".