Indonesian ambassador intervenes in ANU ‘Nazi’ probe
A student who was accused, but eventually cleared, of mimicking a Hitler moustache during a student meeting received high-level diplomatic backing.
Indonesia’s ambassador appealed directly to Australian National University (ANU) vice chancellor Genevieve Bell to support a student who was being investigated over an alleged Nazi gesture made during a Zoom meeting on pro-Palestinian protests.
An online meeting to discuss ongoing campus demonstrations, attended by around 500 people, made headlines in May when media reports said two students had been filmed making apparent Nazi salutes.
One student — an Indonesian national — was accused of mimicking a Hitler moustache, after raising her finger to her upper lip during the meeting. But an internal university investigation found the student has a facial deformity, similar to a cleft lip, which she regularly covered up out of self-consciousness.
That account was backed by multiple people and photographic evidence of her making the gesture on other occasions, and Capital Brief can reveal Indonesian ambassador Siswo Pramono wrote a letter to Bell in support of the student.
