Bob Brown was told on Sunday his visa, granted in late October, had been cancelled due to "contradictory messages" in his application. Picture: file Source: Herald Sun
FORMER Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to try and get a ban on him travelling to Rwanda lifted so he can visit the country's Green party.
Dr Brown was due to fly to Africa on Monday to speak at Rwanda's Democratic Green Party conference, but was told on Sunday his visa, granted in late October, had been cancelled due to "contradictory messages" in his application.
He says it is further evidence the government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame is restricting democracy and crushing political opposition.
"It says a lot about the Kagame government and its very determined efforts not to allow democracy in terms of having free and open political parties function in the country," Dr Brown told AAP.
"The government doesn't really want me in the country as a person who comes from a functioning democracy."
Ms Gillard met president Kagame in October when they co-chaired a meeting of the Millennium Development Goals Advocates Group at the United Nations.
Dr Brown urged Ms Gillard to speak with president Kagame on his behalf, while Greens leader Christine Milne has already called on Foreign Minister Bob Carr to intervene as well.
The former Tasmanian senator also said claims online that he had visited Rwanda in the past were "demonstrably wrong".
He says the ban is intriguing, considering he's so insignificant in the scheme of Rwandan politics.
"I wasn't going to tell the government what to do. I was going there to support the Greens in what they want to do and learn more about Rwanda," he said.
"I am, after all, rather insignificant in Rwanda, so why did he bother? Why block me?"
The former Tasmanian senator was planning to support the Rwandan Greens, which were banned from the country's 2010 election, while leader Frank Habineza was arrested and went into exile in Sweden in 2009 after a party meeting was violently broken up by men wielding sticks.
The party's deputy leader was later found dead, nearly decapitated, while death threats were made against Habineza.
Australia supported Rwanda's inclusion into the Commonwealth in 2009, despite a report months earlier by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative which expressed deep reservations over the country's human rights record and urged Rwanda to tackle a lack of political and press freedom.
"It does raise questions about how effective the Commonwealth is going to be in insisting at least the basic tenets of democracy, that opposition parties are allowed to exist," Dr Brown said.
"This is a test for the Commonwealth, whether President Kagame is going to be taken on.
"The binding heritage of the Commonwealth is democracy and it's being tested.
"It's important the Commonwealth governments, including the Gillard government, are saying to Rwanda 'we're watching you closely and we want to see opposition parties prosper as they are in our countries'."
Although Kagame has been praised for leading Rwanda through nearly two decades of peace and strengthening the country's economy since the ethnic genocide of the mid-1990s, he's also been accused of crushing opposition.
Human Rights Watch said last month's eight-year jail sentence handed to opposition leader Victoire Ingabire for treason and genocide denial "illustrates the Rwandan government's unwillingness to tolerate criticism and to accept the role of opposition parties in a democratic society."
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