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Australia cancels right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos’s visa over Christchurch massacre remarks
- Immigration minister said that comments made by Yiannopoulos were ‘appalling and foment hatred and division’
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The Australian government has cancelled the visa of far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a week after it was personally approved by the immigration minister.
Immigration Minister David Coleman said on Saturday that comments made by Yiannopoulos in the wake of the Christchurch massacre were “appalling and foment hatred and division” and he would not be allowed in the country.
It comes a week after Coleman approved Yiannopoulos’ visa against the advice of the Home Affairs Department, which said the commentator may fail the character test to enter Australia.
Coleman said the attack in Christchurch was “an act of pure evil” carried out “on Muslims peacefully practising their religion.
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“Australia stands with New Zealand and with Muslim communities the world over in condemning this inhuman act,” he said.
Labor spokesman for citizenship and multiculturalism, Tony Burke, earlier on Saturday called on Coleman to treat far-right extremism as it would other forms of extremism and revoke Yiannopoulos’s visa.
“If someone wants to come to Australia and we know that they’ve been speaking in support of values that have given rise to other forms of terrorism, we don’t give them a visa,” Burke told ABC24.
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