The Price of Citizenship

If you get into trouble abroad, should the Australian government come to your rescue? What is an Australian passport worth in an age of growing global insecurity? Join academic and former Iran detainee Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Professor and former prisoner of the Myanmar junta Sean Turnell, and Human Rights Watch’s Australia Director Daniela Gavshon as they discuss the geopolitical, legal and human rights implications of wrongful detention, and what more can be done to bring unjustly detained Australians home.

Panellists:

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian political scientist specialising in the Middle East. In 2018 she was detained during an academic engagement in Iran and served more than two years of a ten-year sentence before being freed in November 2020 in a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Australian government. Kylie is the author of the bestselling memoir The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison and is currently a research fellow at Macquarie University's School of International Studies. She is the Director of the advocacy group The Australian Arbitrary and Wrongful Detention Alliance.

Professor Sean Turnell has been a senior analyst at the Reserve Bank of Australia, a Professor of Economics at Macquarie University, and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute. From 2016 to 2021 he served as economic adviser to Myanmar’s democratic government. Following the military coup that took place in Myanmar in February 2021, Sean was imprisoned alongside Myanmar’s democratic leadership. After 650 days of incarceration and severe ill-treatment, he was finally released in November 2022. Sean has written extensively on economic reform, and the role of financial institutions in economic development, with a special focus on Australia, Myanmar, and the Indo-Pacific. His book on Myanmar’s monetary history, Fiery Dragons, was published in 2009. In 2023 Penguin published Sean’s book on his experience of being a captive in Myanmar, An Unlikely Prisoner. His new book on economic reform in Myanmar, The Best Laid Plans, has also just been published by Penguin and the Lowy Institute.

Daniela Gavshon is the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she spent ten years working at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre where she founded the Truth and Accountability program. There, she led human rights and war crimes investigations and a landmark project mapping laws and policies affecting First Nations people in Australia. From 2009-2012, Daniela was the Solomon Islands Head of Office for the International Center for Transitional Justice, where she advised and supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Daniela has held positions in the Australian government foreign aid portfolio and with UN Women working on women, peace and security. She is the Secretary of the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee, and is on the Advisory Committee of the Australian Human Rights Institute at the University of New South Wales.

Moderator:

Professor Julian Droogan is Head of the School of International Studies, Macquarie University. His research focusses on terrorism, countering violent extremism, and foreign interference. He serves as the co-convenor of the Home Affairs funded AVERT Research Network and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Policing, Intelligence, and Counter Terrorism (Routledge).

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