Oscar nominated Australian filmmaker deported from India

Chennai: Two-time Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker from Australia, David Bradbury, who was travelling to India with his two children was stopped from entering the country at the Chennai Airport.

Although his son and daughter were permitted to stay, Bradbury was deported after a 24-hour long detention on September 10, The Wire reports.

The documentary filmmaker was allegedly stopped at the immigration, detained and denied access to the Australian embassy. He was neither allowed to access his medicines nor use the toilet.

The 73-year-old documentary filmmaker was on a planned two-week-long vacation with his 21-year-old daughter Nakeita Bradbury and 14-year-old son Omar Bradbury.

Kudankulam Nuclear Plant protest

The veteran filmmaker had earlier been on the jury of the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2012 and had documented the Kudankulam Nuclear Plant protest.

Bradbury and his wife Treena Lenthall stayed with the people of Idinthakarai in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu where the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is located. As a filmmaker who has been making documentaries on environmental issues, he documented the people’s plight and their fight against the state and the plant’s owners, Nuclear Power Corporation of India. He is also one of the pioneers of the anti-nuclear movement in Australia.

The Wire reports that he and his children were visiting India to bid farewell to his wife, who had passed away five months ago fighting cancer. They were also planning to visit Varanasi. “I wanted to show my son Omar how Hindus deal with death and say farewell to their loved ones in the next life,” Bradbury was quoted by The Wire.

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Feeling unwelcomed

Upon the family’s arrival at the Chennai Airport, David Bradbury was asked to specify the purpose of his current and earlier visits in 2012. The immigration officials then put him in a “small”, “disgusting room with papers and rubbish on the floor under a bed with a filthy mattress and no sheets.”

The officers allegedly pressured him to unlock his phone and share his Indian contacts which he refused.

The documentary filmmaker, who has health issues was deprived of his medicines even after multiple requests. The officers allegedly denied access to the toilet throughout his detention forcing him to eventually urinate into a paper cup he found in the detention room, the veteran filmmaker said to The Wire.

The filmmaker had to eventually leave the country and go to Bangkok where the family had come from. When it came to the matter of parting, the filmmaker was asked by his son and daughter if they would accompany him. But he told them not to change their plans or else they would regret missing a chance to explore a new country.

“It was just very sad and unfair. The Indian authorities had issued my father a visa after all and he had been very honest in mentioning all the details in his visa application. There was no reason to trouble him and us this way,” Bradbury’s daughter Nakeita was quoted by The Wire.

‘Documenting people’s protest’

David Bradbury said that he believes his involvement in the people’s movement against the nuclear plant in Kudankulam is the reason for the denial of his entry to India.

India’s biggest nuclear power plant, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was facing immense protests from the local fisherfolk with whom David Bradbury was in solidarity. A month before the filmmaker visited the protesting village, a villager was shot dead by the police.

As many as thousands of protestors had marched towards the plants, to which the police replied with violence. Many of the protesting villagers and activists, who feared a potential mishap in the plant could destroy millions of lives, were arrested. Most of them were charged with sedition.

Incidentally, right before visiting India, he had visited Bangkok, where he screened his documentary, “Death is a Lady” made in tribute to a war photographer who was killed while covering a coup attempt in Bangkok in 1985. The screening had raised money for the children in Gaza. It is to be noted that he did not face any problems with Thailand’s immigration authority.

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