List of people declared persona non grata

This is a list of people declared ''persona non grata''. '' Persona non grata'' (Latin, plural: ''personae non gratae''), literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a foreign person entering or remaining in the country. It is the most serious form of censure that one country can apply to foreign diplomats, who are otherwise protected by diplomatic immunity from arrest and other normal kinds of prosecution.

List of people who are declared ''personae non gratae''

1900s

* The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 included the list of 150 ''personae non gratae'' of Turkey, which forbade the entry of mainly a group of former Ottoman Empire officials and about 100 other persons to Turkey, until the lifting of this status in 1938.
* Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain was obliged to leave Italy in 1942 having become ''persona non grata'' to the Italian government. According to Harold Tittmann, a United States representative at the Vatican at the time, this was due to her "ill-disguised leanings to the Allied cause."
* Harald Edelstam, Swedish ambassador to Chile, was declared ''persona non grata'' for his efforts to hide and assist members of the opposition facing persecution by the Chilean junta of 1973–1990, including occupying the Embassy of Cuba in Santiago, containing hundreds of refugees, and declaring it Swedish soil.
* Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary-General of the United Nations and President of Austria, and his wife were given ''persona non grata'' status in the United States and other countries when he was accused of having known about Nazi war crimes and not having done anything about them.
* In September 1952, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan, was declared ''persona non grata'' after making a statement which the Soviets believed linked them to Nazi Germany. The Soviets refused to allow Kennan to reenter the Soviet Union.
* In November 1962, the Mexican authorities, as per a directive from Mexico City Regent Ernesto Peralta Uruchurtu, refused to grant a work permit to US singer and actor Elvis Presley, who was scheduled to travel to Acapulco with a Paramount crew of about fifty other persons, all of whom were given work permits except for him. Presley thus became the only US entertainer to have been officially declared ''persona non grata'' by the Mexican authorities, the result as noted by the latter, of a series of incidents starting in February 1957, when he was banned from radio after a newspaper falsely quoted him speaking badly of Mexican women, then into 1959, when his music was banned from record stores, and continuing into 1961, when his films were banned from theatres. Mention was made of two violent riots between pro-Presley fans, those who did not believe the 1957 allegations were true, and those who did, and were thus against him, at the trendy 'Las Americas' cinema in Mexico City, during the openings of two of his previous films ''King Creole'' (''El barrio contra mi'') in 1959, and ''G.I. Blues'' (''Cafe Europa'') in 1961. As a result, and given that they had already invested some US$250,000 in new camera equipment purchased specifically for this movie, Paramount decided to go ahead with the filming in early January 1963, and hired a double to do Presley's long shot scenes, the entire crew then returning to Los Angeles in early March 1963 to shoot the close-ups between Presley and his co-stars. The film, entitled ''Fun in Acapulco'' opened in US theatres in November 1963. The ban was lifted in 1971.
* In March 1976, Herbert Spiro, the United States Ambassador to Cameroon, also accredited to Equatorial Guinea, was declared ''persona non grata'' by Equatorial Guinea. At the end of a visit to the country which he described as pleasant and uneventful up to that point, Equatoguinean Deputy Protocol Director Santiago Nchama handed him a letter accusing the United States government of engaging in subversive activities there, and days later, Equatorial Guinea's foreign ministry sent a telegram to the State Department announcing that Spiro and Consul William C. Mithoefer Jr, who had accompanied him on his visit, were both barred from the country.
* In April 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency's expert on Iran, George W. Cave, was declared ''persona non grata'' by the Iranian government.
* In the 1990s, Mario Vargas Llosa, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, was "''persona non grata'' in Peru, discredited and insulted in the official press" of Alberto Fujimori's regime. According to Ilan Stavans, "Peruvians have made it a sport to hate Vargas Llosa."
* In 1995, Croatia declared Carl Bildt ''persona non grata'' announcing that he had "lost the credibility necessary for the role of a peace mediator". Bildt had suggested that the President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman was "as guilty of war crimes as the Krajina Serb leader", Milan Martić.
* In 1996 Sergey Andreyev, a Russian, was expelled from Estonia, having turned out to be an employee of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
* Brad Pitt became ''persona non grata'' in the People's Republic of China after he appeared in the 1997 film '' Seven Years in Tibet,'' which sympathetically depicted the Dalai Lama and portrayed the Chinese annexation of Tibet. The ban was lifted in 2014 when he accompanied his wife Angelina Jolie on a film promotion tour.
* Claire Danes also became ''persona non grata'' permanently by the Filipino officials in 1998. The restriction involved a ban from entering Manila or the Philippines and prohibition on distribution of her films in the region. The ban came after Danes said Manila, the capital of the Philippines, "smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over, and that there is no sewage system, and the people do not have anything – no arms, no legs, no eyes". Danes later apologized for those remarks, but the Filipino authorities refused to lift the ban.

2000s

* In 2000, Israel declared Austrian politician Jörg Haider ''persona non grata'' following the Austrian legislative election of 1999, since his right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (german: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) was a member of the Austrian coalition government.
* On February 19, 2000, the United States declared Jose Imperatori—a vice consul assigned to the Cuban interests section of the Swiss embassy—''persona non grata''. Imperatori was accused of acting as an intermediary to assist Mariano Faget in his alleged spying activities. Imperatori refused to leave and was eventually physically expelled on February 26, 2000.
* In 2003 Nikolai Shcherbakov from the Russian Embassy was expelled by Estonia.
* On 22 March 2004 two Russians were expelled by Estonia.
* In 2007, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) House of Representatives voted Saipan resident and United States citizen Ron Hodges ''persona non grata'' by resolution. Hodges was castigated for his letter writing campaign critical of CNMI governance and abuses against alien workers, entitled Chamberonomics. His letters supported a United States takeover of CNMI labor and immigration. Labor and human abuses in the CNMI garment industry had long been the subject of international criticism. The resolution's validity hinged on the question of CNMI sovereignty, but was never enforced and became moot after President George W. Bush signed the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 into law, thus federalizing CNMI labor and immigration.
* In 2008, President of Bolivia Evo Morales declared United States Ambassador Philip Goldberg ''persona non grata'', claiming that the United States government conspired against him and supported his opponents.
* Soon after Bolivia's expulsion of Goldberg, President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez declared United States Ambassador Patrick Duddy ''persona non grata'' in solidarity with Morales' action. Chavez did not cite any specific alleged infractions by Duddy.
* In October 2008, Serbia expelled ambassadors of Montenegro and Macedonia after these countries recognized the independence of Kosovo. In November 2008 Serbia also expelled the ambassador from Malaysia after Malaysia recognized Kosovo's independence.
* In 2008, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel declared American Richard A. Falk, Princeton University professor emeritus of international law, ''persona non grata'' when he was the United Nations Human Rights Council's United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967." Stating this was because Falk previously had compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to Nazi treatment of Jews, Israel barred him in May 2008 and December 2008. As of March 2011, Falk was still banned from Israel.
* On December 23, 2008, Fiji followed through on a threat to expel New Zealand's high commissioner to the island nation. The expulsion came a day after the interim Prime Minister of Fiji announced he would not expel New Zealand's top diplomat because he wanted to improve his relationship with New Zealand. In retaliation to the expulsion, New Zealand declared Fiji's High Commissioner in Wellington ''persona non grata'' as Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key had stated the day before that there would be retaliatory action if its commissioner was expelled.
* In January 2009, following Venezuela expelling Israeli diplomats due to the Gaza War, Israel ordered Venezuelan diplomats to leave the country, declaring them ''personae non gratae'' in Israel.
* In March 2009, President Evo Morales of Bolivia declared a member of the United States embassy (political division) ''persona non grata''.
* On April 8, 2009, President of Moldova Vladimir Voronin declared Romanian Ambassador Filip Teodorescu and Councilor-Minister Ioan Gaborean ''personae non gratae'', claiming that "their activity was inconsistent with their diplomatic status" after the Moldovan flag on the Parliament building was torn down and replaced with Romanian and EU flags during post-election riots in Moldova.
* On May 20, 2009, American actor Alec Baldwin was declared ''persona non grata'' by the Philippine government after an appearance in an episode of the '' Late Show with David Letterman'', where he joked about availing a "Filipino or Russian mail-order bride". Philippine senator and actor Ramon Revilla Jr. said his (Baldwin's) wife would be "unlucky" and that "there will be trouble" if Alec Baldwin were to travel to the country. The Bureau of Immigration has placed Baldwin in its blacklist, barring him from visiting the country.
* On June 3, 2009, Chinese dissident Wu'erkaixi was turned away from Macau Airport and denied entry to China when he reportedly tried to surrender himself to Chinese authorities.
* On June 8, 2009, Russia declared Finnish diplomat Simo Pietiläinen ''persona non grata'', due to a controversial action by Pietiläinen where he smuggled Anton Salonen out of Russia following a long custody dispute between his Finnish father and Russian born lover.
* On August 21, 2009, Slovakia declared Hungarian President László Sólyom ''persona non grata'' (the Latin term was not used, only "unwelcome person", and he was not allowed to cross the border), on the day when the president had been due to unveil a statue of Saint Stephen of Hungary in Komárno. The date is the next day after the Hungarian national holiday celebrating the saint king. The main reason of the ban was that this date is also the day of the anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in which Hungary's armed forces also took part in order to crush the Prague Spring of 1968. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has also expressed his concerns that the president "attempted to stress the Hungarian statehood on sovereign Slovak soil".
* On November 3, 2009, the Prime Minister of Fiji declared Australian and New Zealand diplomats to Fiji ''personae non gratae''. In response, one day later the Australian and New Zealand Governments declared the respective Fijian Representatives ''personae non gratae'' and they were given 24 hours to depart the country. The move came as international tension between Fiji and Australia/New Zealand intensified following a decision by Fijian Prime Minister—Commodore Josaia Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama's decision to indefinitely delay elections in the country.

2010s

* On January 8, 2010, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry declared Respect Party politician George Galloway ''persona non grata'' after he attempted to take 200 aid trucks into the Gaza Strip, along with international activists. He was subsequently deported from Egypt back to the UK.
* In October 2010, Italian singer Al Bano was included in the list of ''personae non gratae'' in Azerbaijan due to visiting Nagorno Karabakh without the permission of Azerbaijan.
* On March 30, 2011, The Kuwaiti Minister of Foreign Affairs declared three Iranian diplomats, including the Ambassador, ''personae non gratae'' for allegedly spying. Upon orders from the Emir of Kuwait, the deputy prime minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs expelled the high ranking Iranian diplomats.
* On April 5, 2011, the Ecuador Ministry declared United States Ambassador Heather Hodges ''persona non grata'' after she did not provide sufficient answers about a leaked diplomatic cable related to Ecuador. In retaliation the United States declared the Ecuadorean Ambassador Luis Gallegos ''persona non grata'' on April 7, 2011.
* On April 27, 2011, Malawi declared British High Commissioner Fergus Cochrane-Dyet ''persona non grata'' a week after a diplomatic cable had been leaked in which Cochrane-Dyet stated that Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika was "becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism".
* On May 1, 2011, the Libyan ambassador to the United Kingdom, Omar Jelban, was given 24 hours to leave the country after Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was ''persona non grata''. The expulsion was in response to attacks on British embassy premises in Tripoli following the death of Colonel Gaddafi's son in a NATO air strike.
* On May 6, 2011, France declared 14 former Libyan diplomats in Paris to be ''personae non gratae'' because of "conduct and activities that are not compatible with the UN resolutions, particularly resolution 1973" and "going against the protection of Libyan civilians".
* On May 19, 2011, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Israel's military attaché to Moscow Col. Vadim Leiderman was declared ''persona non grata'' after being caught receiving secret information from a Russian citizen.
* On January 6, 2012, the United States notified the Venezuelan government of the declaration of Venezuelan diplomat Livia Acosta Noguera ''persona non grata'' and demanded that she leave the United States by January 10, 2012. The declaration was announced by the United States on January 8, and came after an FBI investigation into allegations reported in a Univision documentary. The documentary purported that several diplomats from various countries, including Venezuela, Iran and Cuba were seeking information to commit cyberattacks on United States facilities and had been in contact with a group posing as Mexican hackers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
* On April 8, 2012, Israel declared German poet Günter Grass, recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, ''persona non grata'' because of his poem "What Must Be Said

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