Blacklisted Aussie leaves Phl

An Australian professor left the Philippines yesterday, nearly a week after being barred entry and placed in limbo at an airport in what rights groups say was part of a crackdown on critics of President Duterte.

The Philippine government said Gill Boehringer, 84, was put on a blacklist for allegedly violating laws barring foreigners from engaging in political activities after he attended a protest in 2015.

The former law school dean denies the charges.

“I am not a terrorist. I am a human rights defender,” Boehringer said in a video message recorded on Monday in an airport exclusion room where he had been staying since his arrival last week.

He was the latest foreigner ordered out of the Philippines following Australian Catholic nun Patricia Fox, who has been fighting deportation since April after drawing Duterte’s ire.

Like Fox, Boehringer had joined a factfinding mission looking into alleged rights violations in Mindanao where Duterte had declared martial law, said Maria Sol Taule, the professor’s lawyer.

The government denied Boehringer’s expulsion was part of a crackdown on critics, saying the policy against foreigners’ participation in politics was “nothing new.”

“If they (foreigners) have issues or concerns about how the government is being handled, there are other ways of expressing their opinions, other more peaceful ways,” Dana Sandoval, a Bureau of Immigration spokeswoman, told the