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'They tried many times to corrupt me'. Australians speak out against foreign spies
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has reported that more Australians are being targeted for espionage and foreign interference than ever before. Pro-democracy voices warn clandestine operations against people here by governments such as Iran, Rwanda and Cambodia, could descend into violence if left unchecked.
Published 29 February 2024 5:42am
Updated 29 February 2024 7:48am
By Jennifer Scherer, Niv Sadrolodabaee
Source: SBS News
Image: Foreign interference is impacting members of the Iranian, Rwandan and Cambodian diaspora in Australia.
In August 2023, vocal pro-democracy activist Nos Hosseini received a chilling message on the doorstep of her parents' home in Melbourne.
Hosseini had been an outspoken supporter of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran and its global offshoots, sparked by the suspicious death in custody of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, who was detained in Iran for not wearing her hijab correctly.
But a month before the anniversary of her death, Hosseini's father opened the front door to find the body of a decapitated chicken.
Nos Hosseini fears her activism has left her a target of harassment and intimidation by members of the Iranian regime in Australia. Source: SBS News / /
"Our suspicions were confirmed after ... my sister received messages from our relatives in Iran who were taken away for questioning.
"They were told [by their interrogators] 'did your relatives like that nice little surprise that we left on their doorstep?'"
Members of the Iranian-Australian community have told SBS News that incidents of foreign interference have rapidly escalated since members of the community organised and held protests in solidarity with human rights activists in Iran.
Sources have told SBS protesters have been monitored and targeted by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps here in Australia. Source: SBS News / This image has been digitally altered.
"They infiltrate the protests, openly taking multiple photos of activists.
"We've had protesters assaulted here in Australia, we've had protest organisers followed and their cars have been vandalised.
"It's no coincidence."
They were told [by their interrogators] ‘did your relatives like that nice little surprise that we left on their doorstep?'Nos Hosseini
Professor Dara Conduit, a Middle East specialist at the University of Melbourne, said most foreign interference from Iran is centrally organised, through official government bodies and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
"The regime is very paranoid, and it distrusts other states, it distrusts its neighbours, and it distrusts its diaspora," Conduit told SBS News.
"There are three key ways Iran has carried out foreign interference: targeted assassination plots ... threatening of family members of diaspora members, and the third key way is the use of technology."
Australian government action on foreign interference
The federal government has set up a counter-foreign interference taskforce, which together with ASIO and the Australian Federal Police, aims to disrupt any suspicious activity — but also inform the community about how to report it.
In his ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said more Australians are being targeted for espionage and foreign interference than ever before, revealing details of a foreign interference operation which involved a former politician.
"We have a responsibility to call it out. Australians need to know that the threat is real. The threat is now. And the threat is deeper and broader than you might think."
In a statement to SBS, a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said: "culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities face unique threats and issues arising from foreign interference", with "some foreign powers or their proxies seeking to silence, intimidate, monitor or harass members of CALD communities that they see as dissidents".
In February 2023, Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil singled out Iran as an offending government when it came to foreign interference, revealing ASIO had disrupted an operation on Australian soil targeting an Australian-Iranian critic of the regime.
No, foreign interference from Iran here is not relevant. By no means, under no circumstances.Ahmad Sadeghi, Iran's ambassador to Australia
In an exclusive interview with SBS Persian, the Iranian ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, denied foreign interference is being carried out in Australia from the Iranian government.
"No, foreign interference from Iran here is not relevant. By no means, under no circumstances," he said.
Opposition assistant foreign affairs spokesperson Claire Chandler urged the Iranian ambassador to read the results of the Senate inquiry into human rights implications of recent violence in Iran.
"I would urge them to read the submissions from the Iranian diaspora that were provided to that committee," Chandler said.
"All I'm hearing ... is that Iranians within Australia are very concerned about the monitoring, the surveillance, the harassment, and the intimidation that they are having to deal with at the hands of this regime.
"The [Australian] government needs to be clear-eyed and transparent about its interactions with embassy officials here in Australia, the government needs to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, we also believe the government should be utilising the full suite of sanctions it has available to it."
In response to a question from SBS about the government's reluctance to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: "We have vigilant processes, through the listing of organisations. We go through those processes appropriately, including through the national security, based upon advice."
Threats of kidnapping: operatives targeting Iranian-Australians
Sydney-based activist Mohammad Hashemi's cousin Majid Kazemi was executed in Iran last year, after being arrested during a Woman, Life, Freedom protest.
Before he was killed, Kazemi's family says Iranian authorities interrogated Kazemi about his relatives' activities in Australia.
"We know they have their spies here and we know they are watching us and monitoring us," Hashemi told SBS News.
"They have people in many countries, they are trying to control our people, scare people … they don't have any border for that, they will do anything."
Mohammad Hashemi started a campaign to save his cousin, Majid Kazemi, from execution in Iran last year. Source: SBS News / /
Hashemi's campaign in Australia, an attempt to save his cousin, has instead landed him and his family, who are in Iran, a separate sentence of surveillance.
"They told my father, 'We know everything about Mohammad, what he is doing in Australia, where he lives, what his job is,'" he said.
"[They said] 'If he won't stop, [we] have a mission to go to Australia and kidnap him and take him back to Iran.'"
'They tried many times to corrupt me': A web of Rwandan spies in Australia
Arriving in Australia as a refugee in 2006, Noël Zihabamwe became a target of the Rwandan government, after he refused to become an agent for President Paul Kagame's intelligence squad.
"They tried many times to corrupt me, to make me be who they wanted me to be, but I refused," Zihabamwe told SBS News.
"By refusing I was seen as an enemy of the country."
Noël Zihabamwe says he became a target of the Rwandan regime after he refused to become an agent of influence. Source: SBS News / /
In 2018, his brothers Jean Nsengimana and Antoine Zihabamwe disappeared in Rwanda. Zihabamwe believes they were abducted by the government, to punish him for refusing to become an agent for Kagame's spy network here.
"From local to federal level they refused to cooperate with us or acknowledge they have our brothers. This year it is going to be five years, without knowing any traces, without knowing where my two brothers may be," he said.
"We think that they have died."
I was seen as an enemy of the country.Noël Zihabamwe
Desperate for justice, Zihabamwe enlisted the help of high-profile human rights lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, filing a complaint to the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in 2021.
"Since we filed the complaint, they've gathered that information and made a communication to the Rwandan government. The responses have been wholly inadequate," Robinson said.
"It's important that people are brave enough to stand up and say this is not okay and to raise their case at the UN ... it's the UN's role, because the Rwandan government is not properly investigating these cases. More often than not they're complicit in them and are trying to cover up the truth."
Human Rights barrister Jennifer Robinson. Source: SBS News / /
"It's a very complex network ... which has people who would have come here as refugees, people who have came through various other regimes, people may have come here as students, people may have come here to work," Amiel Nubaha, chair of the Federation of Rwandan Communities in Australia, said.
"It manifests through an atmosphere of coercion."
Amiel Nubaha is the Chair of the Federation of Rwandan Communities in Australia. Source: SBS News / Jennifer Scherer
"You have to know where you go, who is sitting next to you, you have to know their position," Pamphile N. Ngenzi, president of the Rwandan Association of Queensland, told SBS.
"The community is not united in the way it should be.
"In July last year, we had a cultural event here, and we received some messages really threatening the community and asking them not to take food because they think it was poisoned."
In a statement to SBS, the Rwandan High Commission in Singapore, which is accredited to Australia, described these allegations as "nonsense".
"The Rwandan community abroad contributes over $450 million to the Rwandan economy in remittances ... [and] despite distortions and disinformation on Rwanda's efforts by detractors with political agendas … forging national unity has been a priority for Rwanda in the last thirty years."
You have to know where you go, who is sitting next to you, you have to know their position.Pamphile N. Ngenzi
According to the Department of Home Affairs, social cohesion suffers directly from foreign interference, corroding democracy and freedoms.
The Australian director at Human Rights Watch, Daniela Gavshon, told SBS News: "If governments can get away with silencing people beyond their borders it really means nowhere is safe."
"Three decades of human rights abuses in Rwanda and impunity for them, and then their increasing position on the international stage has emboldened them ... they're now suppressing dissent outside their borders.
"If they continue to get away with it, that's just going to continue."
Robert Mukombozi is a former journalist and member of the exiled Rwandan National Congress opposition party. He says Rwanda is investing heavily in foreign interference and Australia is no exception.
Robert Mukombozi is a former journalist and member of the exiled Rwandan National Congress opposition party. Source: SBS News / /
"The risk of physical violence or physical harm on individuals in this country is very possible ... it's a matter of time.
"The community is crying out loud for us to push back on Rwanda's foreign interference."
In a statement to SBS, a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said it: "regularly engages with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, who are concerned about the threats of foreign interference to build community awareness and resilience.
"We will continue to take strong action to deter foreign interference, protect the Australian community and uphold our laws and values," the spokesperson said.
The risk of physical violence or physical harm on individuals in this country is very possible.Robert Mukombozi
Due to his position as an opposition voice, Mukombozi says he is being actively hunted by the Rwandan government, here and abroad.
"In April 2022, I visited Uganda to see family, only to be surrounded by soldiers who took me to a military facility saying they have credible information that I am going to be assassinated," he said.
"I had no option but to return to Australia, so that's the kind of life that we live."
'Why wouldn't they do it in Melbourne?' Cambodian pro-democracy voices sent death threats
Former Victorian Labor MP Hong Lim is an outspoken activist against the Cambodian government, and says he is systematically targeted by members of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) in Australia and abroad.
Charged in absentia with incitement and having received death threats, he's watched other pro-democracy voices living overseas be silenced, threatened, assaulted, detained, and even murdered.
He worries it could happen in Australia, if left unchecked.
Hong Lim is an outspoken activist against the Cambodian Government. Source: SBS News / /
"It's about money, about status, a title they would receive in return for this criminality."
In 2018, then Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened ahead of his visit to Australia, to follow and 'beat up' protesters if they burnt his effigy.
After more than 30 years in power, Hun Sen handed power to his son, Hun Manet, in a largely uncontested election in July last year.
At this time, Lim received an anonymous death threat letter addressed to him and other prominent anti-government voices in Australia, including Victorian MP Meng Heang Tak.
It detailed a hit list to silence the "so-called democratic voice in Australia", threatening that he would be "targeted for death" by a "Cambodian third-hand squad" who would be sent to "do the cleanup".
A death threat letter sent to a list of anti-government voices in Australia, including Former Victorian Labor MP Hong Lim and current Victorian Labor MP Meng Heang Tak. Source: SBS News / /
"I water my garden late at night, but then you are afraid something may happen, so I will always rush so I can get back to the safety of the house.
"You always have that inkling, worry, just constant worry."
Sources have told SBS News that agents for the CPP in Australia actively recruit members of the diaspora to ensure their allegiance to the regime.
They have expressed concerns about an increase in foreign interference ahead of Prime Minister Hun Manet's visit to Australia as part of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne in March.
When asked by SBS at a doorstop interview about the message inviting Hun Manet to attend the summit sends to the Cambodian-Australian community, Albanese said: "Every ASEAN Leader is being invited to the Australian ASEAN Summit.
"I think that the idea that we don't engage in Southeast Asia would be a counterproductive one."
The Cambodian government says it is building a legacy of peace and development.
"Democracy is not a linear process itself, we must expect two steps forward, one step backwards and sometimes one step sideways, but overall Cambodian democracy is quite vibrant," Cambodia's Ambassador to Australia, Cheunboran Chanborey, told SBS.
You always have that inkling, worry, just constant worry.Hong Lim
Sources have also told SBS News that the CPP has divided Australia into 'zones'. with regime-appointed senior officials monitoring them in each state and territory except Tasmania.
Sources say these officials are responsible for reporting back to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh about government critics to censor any opposition.
In an interview with SBS, the Cambodian Ambassador to Australia Cheunboran Chanborey said "monitoring or surveillance are terms I think are misinforming or misguiding."
"We have been working closely with community leaders across Australia because we believe community engagement is crucial for Cambodia's social economic development, for enhanced Cambodia-Australia bilateral ties," Chanborey said.
Victorian Labor MP Meng Heang Tak received a death threat letter last year. Source: SBS News / /
"It's designed to divide and conquer our community," Meng Heang Tak said.
"What I always call, fly-in-fly-out officials."
A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs says the Australian government: "will continue to act decisively to protect the community from the risk of harm posed by individuals who choose to engage in criminal activity or behaviour of concern, including visa cancellation or refusal where appropriate."
