Human rights violators, corrupt officials, and cyber hackers will be banned from visiting Australia and spending their ill-gotten gains in the country after the Australian Parliament passed a Magnitsky-style law. Titled the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Thematic Sanctions) Bill 2021,  the legislation passed the lower house of the Australian parliament on Thursday. The Bill is partly based on the United States’ Magnitsky Act, which is named after lawyer Sergei Magnitsky for exposing major tax fraud committed by Russian officials. He was later imprisoned, tortured, and died in 2009. Different from regular sanctions, Magnitsky-style laws target individual human rights violators and can freeze their assets overseas. Targets of the Bill could be cyber hackers, corrupt generals, cronies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Chinese Communist Party officials who have been responsible for serious human rights atrocities. Calling for its passage in the Senate, Liberal Senator James Paterson, one of the Bill’s early advocates, …