Who bombed the Hilton? (31 page)

The options available to the government are severely limited. The report outlines four potential courses of action and then underlines why each is imperfect. The first option could be to ‘proscribe the organisation', that is, to ban it. It is immediately pointed out that no country in the world has done this and to enact such legislation in Australia would ‘not only … create legal difficulties … it would be politically undesirable and might provoke demands that other organisations be proscribed (e.g. Croatian groups)'.
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The second option moots withdrawing all forms of government assistance and recognition, ‘in addition to immigration and passport measures'. This would remove the Ananda Marga's recognition as a religious denomination, financial assistance to its schools and Commonwealth tax concessions. However, this is riddled with technical legal problems in the withdrawal of educational assistance and tax concessions. It would also require extremely complex complementary action from each state government.
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The third option is stunningly simple: ‘to maintain the status quo, including the present restrictions'.
The drawbacks of this are also obvious — it maintains the current situation, which is regarded as untenable.
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A fourth idea is to give the Ananda Marga what they want — in effect, to give in to their demands. In brief the government would remove all current restrictions and allow the sect the rights and privileges accorded to similar organisations and their members. This is shot down instantly because ‘at the present time this would bolster Ananda Marga's belief that their campaign of violence and harassment had been successful and encourage them to embark on other campaigns to force fresh concessions (e.g. the release of jailed members in Australia)'.

At the time of the report, these incarcerated members include Anderson, Alister and Dunn, along with Duff, who has just been sentenced to nine years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court of the ACT for ‘unlawful acts against an Indian diplomat', and the ‘relaxed and tanned' Mr Peter Henry who has been charged with creating a public mischief.
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Which of these four limited options to choose?

The decision is to go with number three and to maintain the status quo, despite its ramifications, and to enact a number of additional measures. These include the rather vague statement that ‘some form of special legislation may be called for directed towards controlling acts of violence of the general nature of those in question'. Much clearer is the decision to keep
completely silent at the present moment. The recommendation is that ‘no statement be made by the government on Ananda Marga at present'. Instead, they will keep up to date with the situation and gather material for a public statement ‘for use at an appropriate time'. If such a statement is to be made in the future, it will be jointly handled by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, and the Minister for Administrative Affairs. It is also suggested that such a statement could possibly be the ‘forerunner of a long-term government programme to inform the public of the harmful side of the activities of the Ananda Marga'.
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Further measures include the suspension of any new government recognition and assistance (for example, for new Ananda Marga schools) and the continuing ban on ‘non-Australian Ananda Marga adherents' entering Australia or being granted citizenship. It is suggested that ASIO and COMPOL ‘increase their efforts to identify the potentially violent elements of Ananda Marga' and continue the ‘appropriate protective measures … for Indian establishments in Australia'. It is also agreed that ‘the question of passports for Australian Ananda Marga members continue to be subject to advice from the Passports Working Group'.
¹⁴
This is the group who made the decision to seize Brandon's passport in the first place, which let's face it, led to a heap of trouble. What's their advice now?

Despite all the tough talk, it's hard to interpret what happens now as anything other than a complete backdown.

In less than a fortnight after the above report is tabled on 16 November 1978, the Michael Brandon passport is returned to its owner.

The
Sydney Morning Herald
seems fairly confident that this is the result of intimidation and fear of fiery suicides on the streets of Sydney:

The government, on the other hand, is a lot more evasive:

The moment the passport is returned by a dragooned federal government, Abhiik Kumar, the number one suspect in the Hilton Hotel bombing and possible mastermind of other acts of terrorism both in Australia and abroad, hops on a plane to India. And then he's gone.

1979

Well, not quite completely gone …

Like the end of any bad relationship, things will shudder on for a bit. Let's face it, if a bond is tight, no matter how dysfunctional, it's hard to let go. I may want to imagine Norm Sheather watching, stoic and steely-eyed, churning with emotion as his nemesis Abhiik Kumar boards the plane at Sydney airport for the final time and ascends into the heavens — however, things are rarely this cinematic.

While it might be obvious to Norm Sheather that things are over, there are players on both sides who continue to provoke and goad each other. It's not an easy break-up to watch or to track. After Kumar leaves Australia in late 1978 he becomes harder and harder to detect as the years roll by. That said, like all his appearances in the past, when he does pop his head up, it's always an astonishing, show-stopping performance.

For Norm Sheather, the arrest of the Yagoona Three, Seary's subsequent allegations and the confiscation of Kumar's Brandon passport coincide with the conclusion of the major Hilton operation around ‘August, 1978'.
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Eventually we will learn Norm's view on the matter but at the time it passes unreported.

From the start it's clear that Abhiik Kumar has no real desire to shift his base from Australia to destinations unknown. Despite the return of his passport and jaunt to India, he seems reluctant to slip away. He will claim in years to come that immediately prior to the reissuing of his restricted passport he was flown to Canberra — at the ‘taxpayers' expense' and possibly at the behest of Malcolm Fraser — for a
tête à tête
with the Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock at Parliament House. After being chauffeured to this cosy meeting, Abhiik claims that Peacock did a deal with him: if he accepted a three-month restricted passport, then a six-month one would be issued and finally, presumably if he behaved, he'd be given a full passport.

Apparently motivating such reasonableness is a complaint Abhiik had filed with the Commonwealth Ombudsman about the original passport cancellation, citing relentless political persecution. He argued, ‘Not many Australians with no criminal record and no charges or jail time pending have their passport revoked. The confiscation of my passport was an abuse of power that simply could not stand.'
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Fighting words. But Peacock and Fraser deny such a meeting ever took place.
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Playing the aggrieved party seems to come naturally to Kumar. Even on his restricted passport he is still determined both to wield his power and proclaim his injured status. By January 1979 he is abruptly back in Australia and in the headlines. Since their June 1978 arrests, Anderson, Alister and Dunn have repeatedly asked for visits from their spiritual advisor, Abhiik Kumar. This request is granted, but only if prison warders at Long Bay jail — citing security concerns — are allowed to observe the visits. The trio object vehemently and embark on a hunger strike in September 1978. By January this has stretched to four months and has Anderson and Alister in the prison hospital. Dunn too begins a fast but this has ended by the time the fracas hits the papers.
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The hunger strike sets the state Public Service Board, the Department of Corrective Services and the Long Bay prison officers at each other's throats. By mid-January 1979, the dispute ends up before a judge, Justice Dey, in a closed session as he attempts to weigh up the security concerns of the guards and the rights of the incarcerated men. An editorial in the
Sydney Morning Herald
points out:

The editor does recognise that while the Ananda Marga may not evoke much on the public sympathy front, he does add that were the prisoners members of an ‘orthodox religion', the refusal of visits from their minister would produce howls of protest.

What is so intriguing about this stand-off is how agitated the mere idea of Kumar makes the — presumably hard-nosed — prison guards of Long Bay jail. While Justice Dey is reported as being ‘satisfied that the concern of the prison staff was genuinely held', and that ‘the actions of the members of the sect have contributed to the attitude adopted by the prison officers', he nonetheless orders the guards to allow the sect leader into the jail at least on a trial basis. However, the guards simply refuse to accept Judge Dey's ruling. Instead, the Long Bay jail officers appeal to the full bench of the state Industrial Commission against the order. They really don't want Kumar in their jail. While the extremism of the hunger strike must be unsettling, what leaks out from behind the closed hearings is that what the officers are really afraid of is
the ‘anticipated brain-washing of one of the members' and ‘the possible consequences of this'; that somehow Kumar will, during a visit, use his mind control on one or all of the trio and order them to attack.
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The editor of the
Sydney Morning Herald
asks exactly how the now stick-thin prisoners — two of them in wheelchairs — ‘brainwashed' or not, are supposed to carry out these imagined assaults upon warders after Kumar has wandered through. ‘Is the public to suppose that security is so weak at Long Bay that warders cannot live with the vague possibility of violence which may never appear?'
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Despite the scaredy-cat taunts from the
Herald
, I think what set the warders on edge was that they got intelligence about Kumar from their colleagues in the police force that painted a portrait of a man they would do well to be afraid of.

Whether those in charge are gun-shy because of the chaos over Kumar's passport, the spiritual leader of the Australasian Margiis is eventually allowed to enter the prison. It's possible the authorities also want to stamp out any behaviour that emulates tactics used by imprisoned ANC and IRA members around the globe that might characterise these incarcerated men as political prisoners.

The capitulation of the Long Bay prison staff to the visits is a short-lived victory for the sect leader. Kumar's three-month passport is set to expire in
early March 1979 and there are claims that unnamed ‘authorities' (Interpol? ASIO?) attempt to arrest him in Nepal around this time.
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While evidence of this is sketchy, there are reports of him in Sydney throughout 1979. Detective Senior Constable Allan David Henderson says he speaks to Kumar in passing a number of times that year: on 19 February and twice between 9 July and 1 August 1979 during the court appearances of Alister, Anderson and Dunn.
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At the same time as this argy-bargy is going on about the human and spiritual rights of prisoners, the first anniversary of the Hilton bombing rolls by. It's a surprisingly muted event with a memorial gathering arranged by Sydney City Council workers remembering their dead. However, one voice rings out loud and clear up the coast in Newcastle. Detective Inspector Norm Sheather who, subsequent to his incredulous interviews with Seary in June and July 1978, has been virtually silent, makes the incendiary statement to the
Sydney Morning Herald
that the ‘police knew who was responsible' for the Hilton bombing.