Citizenship revocation and Australia’s counter-terrorism history

ANDREW ZAMMIT • October 31, 2019

Of the 82 counter-terrorism laws passed by Australian governments since 9/11, one of the most controversial has been the power to revoke citizenship.

Under this law, passed in 2015, dual-national Australians can lose their Australian citizenship if they are convicted of a terrorism offence inside Australia, or if they are overseas and the newly-created Citizenship Loss Board concludes that they are involved in terrorist activity.

The Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) recently reviewed this power, and argued that some aspects of the law “pass muster and some don’t”. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) has been conducting its own review. Think-tanks, legal organisations, community groups and government agencies have all contributed to the debate.

One prominent feature of the debate is that both sides often treat the involvement of Australians in violent extremist groups like Islamic State (IS) as a radically new dilemma. The debate lacks a strong sense of history.

On the few occasions when historical analogies have been made, it is usually to compare IS fighters with people who fought for the Nazis in the Second World War. Those who draw such comparisons argue that it has long been the case that Australian citizenship could be revoked for dual-nationals who serve in “the armed forces of a country at war with Australia”, and that revoking citizenship for suspected involvement in terrorist activity logically follows. Abbott made this argument in 2015, stating that the laws “reflect modern conditions where often people don’t go and fight against us in a foreign army, they fight against us in a terrorist group”.

The resort to analogies with state-based armies implies that Australia has never faced another situation comparable to the current IS threat. However, Australia has faced threats from transnational non-state violent extremists on many other occasions.

For this post, I look back at the spate of violence Australia experienced in the 1960s and 1970s, involving neo-Ustasha groups at war with the government of Yugoslavia, to show how Australia once responded quite differently to a situation somewhat similar to that seen today.

Neo-Ustasha violent extremism in Australia

The Ustasha was a fascist movement which had ruled Croatia and parts of Bosnia from 1941 to 1945. Led by Ante Pavelic and allied with Hitler and Mussolini, the Ustasha participated in the Holocaust, murdering hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and dissidents. Their rule ended in 1945 when they were overthrown by the communist Partisan movement, backed by the Allies and led by Josep Broz (widely known as “Tito”).

From exile in Argentina, Ante Pavelic tried to sustain the Ustasha movement by founding the Croatian Liberation Movement (Hrvatski oslobodilacki pokret – HOP). Pavelic’s HOP faced competition from another organisation, the Croatian National Resistance (Hrvatski  narodni  odbor – HNO), founded by former concentration camp commander Vjekoslav Luburic. By the 1950s both of these Ustasha organisations had established branches throughout much of Europe, North America, and Australia.

These organisations sought to overthrow Tito’s Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by capitalising on the political dynamics of the Cold War. As Tito’s regime was a communist dictatorship which suppressed the aspirations of many national groups, the exiled Ustasha remnants downplayed their fascist past and portrayed themselves as simply anti-communist Croatian nationalists. [1]

The HNO and HOP were deeply divided and ineffective, and were often penetrated by Yugsoslavia’s intelligence services. They lacked international support (in 1957 Pavelic resorted to writing letters to leaders of NATO countries, imploring them to support his cause) and any apparent prospects of success. This prompted some of their younger members to form their own neo-Ustasha organisations to take direct action.

In 1961, disillusioned Australian members of the HOP and HNO created the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood, which the CIA would later describe as “one of the most radical and dangerous of the Croatian extremist groups”.

The Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood tried to launch military incursions into Yugoslavia, hoping to spark a popular uprising. For their first attempt, nine Croatian-Australian men were sent to train in paramilitary camps in West Germany and Italy, and on 7 July 1963 they crossed the border from Italy into Yugoslavia, armed with pistols, knives and explosives.

This attempted incursion proved a dramatic failure, and all nine men were caught within two weeks.

The event caused a diplomatic dispute between Yugoslavia and Australia, and marked the beginning out an outbreak of violence across Australia associated with Croatian nationalism. By one count, there were 56 such incidents occurring from May 1964 until April 1973, including at least 16 bombings, multiple stabbings, arson attacks, suspected bombing attempts, violent threats and small-scale acts of property damage. In 1972 there was another military incursion into Yugoslavia which again involved Australians, causing further diplomatic dramas.

It was often unclear who was behind each act of violence.[2] On several occasions members of the neo-Ustasha networks were charged and convicted over offences such as assault and illegal possession of explosives and firearms, but most of the bombings remained unsolved. Supporters of Yugoslavia also engaged in violence, and Yugoslavia’s intelligence services had penetrated many of the Croatian émigré networks and at times even manipulated the Australian justice system. The violence was accompanied by a war of words between Croatian nationalists and supporters of Tito's Yugoslavia, who would each portray themselves as the chief victims. ASIO suspected that Croatian nationalists were behind the bulk of the bombings, but also suspected that Yugoslavia’s intelligence services were involved in some of them.[3]

For this post, what matters most are not the precise contours of the violence, but how the period resembles the situation faced today. With political contestation in Yugoslavia inspiring attempts by Australians to fight abroad, as well as violence inside Australia (and many other countries), there are clear parallels.

For example, there were controversies over cancelling the passport of Srecko Rover (who ran the Australian branch of the HNO) that parallel arguments today about cancelling the passports of people suspected of trying to join IS. There were similarly debates about whether the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood should be outlawed under the First World War era “unlawful associations” provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914, foreshadowing the legislation introduced to proscribe terrorist organisations after 9/11.

In particular, Australian authorities faced the question of whether violent extremist individuals should be removed from Australia, or prevented from returning if already overseas, resembling today’s debates over citizenship revocation.

Risks of offshoring the threat

For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA, now the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) was asked in early 1975 to provide its opinion on the "Deportation of Croatian Terrorists". An inter-departmental committee had noted the suggestion by the Commonwealth Police (now the Australian Federal Police) to deport three "militant Croats" who were about to finish serving their prison sentences. The Commonwealth Police were keen to be rid of the men, by having them deported either to Yugoslavia or any other country that would take them.

The DFA did not respond favourably to these suggestions. A draft of the DFA's submission to the Minister for Foreign Affairs advising on the response noted several objections. It stated that:

Croatian terrorists, convicted of criminal activities in pursuance of their political beliefs, should not be deported to Yugoslavia. To do so would be condemning them to imprisonment there; could cause a violent reaction amongst the Croatian community in Australia; and lead to retaliation against Australian diplomats...

On the last point, the draft noted that in 1973:

… the Australian Ambassador in Belgrade was threatened with assassination if Australia endeavoured to deport Croatian extremists to Yugoslavia.

The draft submission also objected to the idea of deporting them to third countries:

... where they would be free to continue their anti-Yugoslav activities. We would, in effect, be 'exporting terrorism'. Moreover, we doubt whether the Australian Government would wish formally to approach some of these Governments in an effort to 'off-load' onto them our convicted Croatian extremists.

Insights from history

Comparing these events to some of the political discussions today, we see situations that are somewhat similar, though with responses that are remarkably different.

For example, the 1970s cases demonstrate some concern by Australia over the human rights of the suspected terrorists, given the brutal nature of the communist regime in Yugoslavia. This is evident in the DFA documents, but also in the parliamentary debates at the time, particularly the 1973 exchanges between Attorney-General Lionel Murphy and Shadow Attorney-General Ivor Greenwood.

We have rarely seen similar concern over Australian IS members facing doubtful justice systems in Syria and Iraq. As discussed in an earlier post, the government's stated preference has been to "deal with these people as far from our shores as possible" (with the recent and rare exception of helping to repatriate some of the unaccompanied children caught up in the fall of IS-held territories).

Similarly, the DFA deliberations showed concerns over the diplomatic problems of creating domestic unrest at home and of trying to “off-load” violent extremists on to other countries. In contrast, the government expressed no doubt about the merits of treating Neil Prakash, once described by George Brandis as the “most important and the most dangerous” Australian member of IS, as Fiji’s problem. The fact that Fiji’s government disputed that Prakash had ever been one of their citizens made little difference.[4] These sorts of problems have been discussed in the INSLM and PJCIS reviews, but do not appear to have influenced political decision-making.

The parallels to the current situation should not be overstated. The neo-Ustasha networks posed a much less severe terrorist threat than that seen today, as there were fewer deaths and most of the bombings were aimed at intimidation rather than causing casualties. IS, by contrast, controlled large amounts of territory and directly instigated domestic attacks against the Australian public.

Moreover, evidence that Australia once took a different approach to a particular situation is not, in itself, evidence that the current approach is wrong. There are also features of the 1960s and 1970s responses that we should have no wish to repeat today, such as political polarisation, several doubtful convictions, and attempts to demonise the Croatian (and wider Yugoslav) communities over the actions of a small number of violent extremists.

Nonetheless, looking back at these earlier events shows that Australia's current approach of revoking citizenship for involvement in terrorism (both proven and suspected) is quite radical. It is not simply an inevitable step, as implied by analogies with the existing law revoking citizenship for fighting against Australia in the armed forces of another country.

The analogies with state-based armies misrepresent our current approach as just the logical application of a long-standing principle to a modern problem. Instead, the current position represents a dramatically new way of dealing with a type of problem that Australia has faced many times before.

The 1975 DFA deliberations show an awareness of the moral dilemmas, diplomatic difficulties and practical shortcomings posed by attempting to shift a terrorist threat offshore. This awareness is often lacking in contemporary political rhetoric around citizenship revocation.

[1] The relationship between Croatian nationalism and the Ustasha movement was complicated. Ustasha groups often tried to downplay their fascist past and portray themselves as just patriotic Croatians, while Tito's regime tended to denigrate any manifestations of Croatian nationalism as Ustasha-tainted. In reality there were many variants of Croatian nationalism, and the Ustasha and neo-Ustasha movements were far from representative of them all. For detailed discussion this complicated history, see here, here and here.

[2] This is an extremely complicated period of history. In the book I am co-authoring with Debra Smith on the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism in Australia, the chapter on the neo-Ustasha groups has been one of the two chapters most difficult but exciting to conduct research for (the other being the one on the Hilton bombing), as there are so many unsolved mysteries.

[3] For example, in Volume 2 of ASIO’s official history John Blaxland writes on page 123 that "In the 1960s and 1970s there were sixteen bomb attacks and numerous other incidents against Yugoslav interests in Australia, many if not most of them attributed to Croatians, although some were believed to be the work of the Yugoslav Intelligence Service (YIS)." On 129 he adds that "Notwithstanding the YIS's activities, ASIO officers were confident that the Croats were the ones involved in the bombings."

[4] For the moment there is little likelihood that Fiji will have to deal with Prakash, as he is in a Turkish prison and Australia has sought his extradition. However, legal experts have warned that, by revoking Prakash’s citizenship, the Government may have undermined its own extradition request. This raises the possibility that, once he has served his sentence in Turkey, Prakash might be left for Fiji to deal with.