An Australian human rights activist who spent six days detained at an international airport in the Philippines is on a flight back to Sydney.
NSW professor Gill Boehringer was barred entry into the Philippines on August 8 after being placed on the Bureau of Immigration's blacklist for attending a rally three years ago.
The 84-year-old, who has been detained at Manila's international airport since then, boarded a China Southern Airlines en route to Sydney via Guangzhou about 1pm local time on Tuesday. He's due to arrive in Sydney on Wednesday morning.
His lawyer Maria Sol Taule said her client, who is suffering from deep vein thrombosis and cellulitis in both legs, boarded the fight without medical clearance.
She applied to the Bureau of Immigration to allow him to stay in the country on medical grounds and requested that a medical expert from outside the airport assess him, but this was denied.
Ms Sol Taule said she was "appalled" by the bureau's refusal to provide Prof Boehringer with his basic human rights and insisted the allegations against him were incorrect.
"We are very frustrated by Prof Gill Boehringer's arbitrary and whimsical inclusion in the blacklist order. It has no basis at all," she told AAP on Tuesday.
"Prof Boehringer is a lawyer and active human rights advocate and this attack against him by Philippine government apparatuses is unacceptable."
The US-born academic says the bureau incorrectly believes he participated in a rally three years ago and insists his work in the Philippines was based on supporting education and protecting human rights.
Prof Boehringer, who is married to a Filipino woman, has accused the bureau of putting his "life at risk" by not allowing him to get proper medical clearance to travel.
"You cannot predict that a person is fit to travel and not in danger from a deep vein thrombosis, which I have previously suffered and nearly died from with a blood clot in my lung," he said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Geneve Rivera-Reyes from advocacy group Health Action for Human Rights examined Prof Boehringer after he arrived in the Philippines and said it was "not safe" for him to travel again without a medical clearance.
The government claims it banned Prof Boehringer because his participation in a November 2015 rally violated an order "prohibiting foreigners from engaging in political activities in the Philippines".
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