There’s been dramatic scenes at Bonriki International Airport in Kiribati on Thursday afternoon between Fiji Airways and local authorities attempting to illegally deport High Court Judge David Lambourne.
The captain of the aircraft refused to take Lambourne given an appeal court judge had granted an injunction on the deportation order and he was unwilling to go.
However, immigration and other government officials wouldn’t let the plane leave unless Lambourne was on board.
After a tense three hour standoff the plane was allowed to depart and Lambourne was taken to a motel in the capital Tarawa where he will be detained.
Speaking to 1News Lambourne said he was extremely saddened by the situation as it shows the Kiribati Government has completely failed to adhere to the law and shows the lengths they are prepared to go to, to do whatever they want.
“They have demonstrated Kiribati has become an authoritarian state with a non functioning judiciary,” he said.
The Australian, who is married to Opposition Leader Tessie Lambourne has been at the centre of government attempts to strip him of his judge’s life tenure for the last two years..
He left Kiribati in 2020 to attend a conference in Australia but became stranded overseas after the Kiribati Government refused to let him back in on repatriation flights in order to prevent him from resuming his judicial role.
That move was ruled as unconstitutional by Chief Justice William Hastings, a New Zealander, who himself has since been suspended by the Kiribati Government.
Lambourne was finally allowed to return to Kiribati on the first commercial flight on August 1 on a visitors visa but this morning police and immigration officials turned up at his home before 6am with a deportation order.
Despite Lambourne’s lawyer getting a court injunction to stop his deportation, President Taneti Maamau then issued a new deportation order.
Lambourne says the Court of Appeal injunction covers that as well but he suspects he will be detained until the weekend when the government will attempt to put him on a Solomon Airlines flight.
This latest ominous move comes just a month after 1News broke the story that Kiribati was withdrawing from the regional body the Pacific Islands Forum.
There’s fears that China, which has extremely close diplomatic ties with the island nation which switched its allegiance from Taiwan in 2019, has encouraged the move isolating it from its Pacific neighbours.
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