Nicaraguan bows out of teaching post

[paineinthearse]

See prior story in the Massachusetts forum.

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/08/nicaraguan_bows_out_of_teaching_post/

Nicaraguan bows out of teaching post
Ex-rebel leader has visa denied
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff | March 8, 2005

A historian and former Sandinista leader who helped overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is no longer scheduled to teach classes at Harvard Divinity School this spring after she said she was denied a visa because of her role in alleged "terrorist activity."
Dora Maria Tellez applied for a student visa to study English last year at the University of San Diego.

She then planned to teach in Cambridge this spring as a visiting professor, although she had not yet applied for the required teaching visa. But once the student visa was denied, Tellez told Harvard of- ficials that she would not be teaching classes on religion and society because she expected her teaching visa would also be rejected. "I'm not angry," Tellez, 49, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Managua. "I feel threatened if the United States considers me a terrorist. I want an explanation."

Tellez, who is asking the Nicaraguan government to investigate, said she is also considering her legal options. Her supporters in the United States blame tightened immigration rules after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I think with the new Homeland Security rules, George Washington would have been denied a visa," said John Coatsworth, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, which had approved Tellez's appointment. "If we are denying visas for people who are struggling against tyranny equally with people who are carrying out terrorist attacks against innocent civilians for no good reason, I think we're making a terrible mistake."

According to Gioconda Belli, a Nicaraguan writer who now lives in Los Angeles and has taken up Tellez's cause, the former Sandinista leader was denied the student visa under a section of immigration law that bars people who have taken part in terrorist activities. The letter to Tellez from the US Department of State quoted a section of the law that bans visas for anybody who "has, under circumstances indicating an intention to cause death or serious bodily injury, incited terrorist activity," Belli said.

more.......

David Abel of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Kathleen Burge can be reached at [e-mail].

[markus]

1. When will the civilized world begin to deny US terrorists visas?

Negroponte comes to mind (although he'll be traveling on diplomatic papers for a while yet, someday he will not).

There are probably lots of other US citizens involved in the terrorist initiatives of the US and local oligarchs who, under any reasonable definition, should find travel outside the US uncomfortable.