A Cameroonian journalist has accused Australia of trying to silence her after she was refused a visa to come to the country to speak at a press freedom event.
Mimi Mefo, an award-winning journalist working for German media outlet Deutsche Welle, was denied a visa on the grounds that she may try to stay illegally.
In correspondence sent to Ms Mefo, Home Affairs Department officials said they were "not satisfied that the applicant's employment and financial situation provide an incentive to return following his (sic) stay in Australia or to abide by the conditions to which the visa would be subject".
Ms Mefo was due to give a keynote address at Griffith University's Integrity 20 conference on Friday.
Mimi Mefo won this year's Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award. Source: Index on Censorship
Integrity 20 chair Susan Forde said Ms Mefo was insulted by the suggestion that she would not return to a job that she loves and believed she had been judged on the basis of her nationality.
"We’re certainly very concerned that there seems to be a sense that if somebody from a country such as Cameroon comes to Australia that they will automatically want to stay or will abscond once they’re here," she said.
"Someone like Mimi is really quite insulted by that suggestion.”
Ms Mefo expressed her frustration after an appeal to the initial rejection failed to have the "insane" decision overturned.
"For some insane reason, [Australia's Ambassador to Germany's] team think that Australia is heaven where I will abandon my job in Germany, disappoint everyone at the AIJC in South Africa, just to remain there illegally," she tweeted.
"I guess there are many ways to attempt silencing."
Ms Mefo had flights booked from Australia to South Africa after the Brisbane conference to deliver a prestigious lecture at an investigative journalism conference alongside Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.
She was jailed in Cameroon last year for reporting allegations of military involvement in the death of an American missionary and only released four days later following national and international pressure.
In July, she travelled to the United Kingdom as a guest of the British government to attend a major global conference on media freedom.
“She’s really quite an inspiration and a very brave woman and that’s why we wanted her and it’s just such a shame the Australian public won’t have access to her," Ms Forde said.
Index on Censorship, a London-based organisation which campaigns for free expression, condemned the Australian decision.
"Denying visas to journalists who have faced oppression and censorship in their own countries simply emboldens the oppressor," Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said.
“It is frankly insulting and belittling to suggest Mimi Mefo would use the opportunity of this keynote to seek asylum in Australia.”
A Home Affairs spokesperson refused to comment on Ms Mefo's case, but provided the following comment on visa decisions:
"The decision-maker must be satisfied that health, character, security and genuine temporary entry and stay requirements are met in order to grant a visa."
