Across the weekend, protests calling for a ceasefire and end to the complicity in genocide in Palestine, at Port Botany, Enmore Theatre and Sydney CBD have been met with increased police brutality.
Saturday March 23: Palestine Action Group protest
Three protestors were brutally arrested by the NSW police during the twenty-fourth weekly protest in Sydney CBD. Footage quickly spread across social media as attendees, including Public Service Association’s (PSA) Unionists for Palestine, filmed the incident where police were described as “grabbing the demonstrators by the hands, legs and even pressing their knees in their backs.”
The three individuals were immediately taken to the Surry Hills police station and kept there for the night, while protestors stood outside in support. Sarah Shaweesh posted from outside the station, saying that the protesters were only “bringing attention to what is happening at the moment in Gaza”.
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi tweeted asking to free the protesters and noted that it “follows a violent police crackdown on protestors” on Friday, March 24, at the Webb Dock picket in Port Melbourne where tear gas and rubber bullets were used against attendees.
Protestors had been using a blend of food dye, water, and starch to depict blood in what is referred to as a “die-in”; they lay down to recreate, and protest scenes experienced by Palestinians in the ongoing genocide. This occurred as the rally attendees marched down Market St.
9News reported that police acted “after red food dye was reportedly squirted on police officers.”
Yet Legal Observers NSW noted that NSW riot police immediately arrested protestors “without giving move on orders or warnings”. An “unjustified” escalation followed which “resulted in some officers getting a small amount” of this fake blood on their uniforms.
“No protestors initiated contact with police nor targeted police with the water solution,” Legal Observers NSW said in a social media statement.
They said that this routine and “unreasonable” proximity to protestors every week is “intended to intimidate”, in addition to the excessive force and police intervention against those being arrested, as well as those monitoring or filming the arrests.
The NSW police reportedly did not inform the three protestors why they were being arrested.
That same evening, they were released, after being charged with assault of a police officer in execution of duty and intentionally or recklessly destroying or damaging property.
Sunday March 24: Enmore Theatre protest
Tzedek Collective planned an action outside Enmore Theatre to protest British journalist Douglas Murray’s show, ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’, on the basis that he is a “Holocaust denier, Islamophobic, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian ‘academic’ spreading hate speech”.
Murray’s February show and fundraiser for Israeli soldiers at the Apollo Theatre in London was moved to an undisclosed location after staff refused to work at the venue.
This action came after a previous attempt to write to and call upon Enmore Theatre to cancel the event.
Protestors gathered from 2pm onwards and chanted, “Israel shame shame, you don’t speak in the Jewish name” and “shame, Enmore Theatre, shame.” One video also reported that the Enmore Theatre draining out the voices of protestors by playing music near the exit.
In a response today, Tzedek said: “”We protested Douglas Murray’s event because he is an outspoken propagandist for Israel’s genocide. One day he’s saying the Nazis were misunderstood, and the next he’s saying Hamas is worse than the Third Reich.”
In conjunction with the Jewish holiday of Purim, Tzedek Collective did an anti-zionist reading of the Megillah, which “relate[s] the story of Purim, when a genocidal empire attempted to enact a genocide against the Jews.”
“Today, Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.”
NSW police were heavily present, standing near the protestors outside Enmore Theatre and across the road. Police stood outside the theatre for the duration of Murray’s show, and remained afterwards.
Sunday March 24: ZIM Shipping Protest
At the Port Botany protest last night, hundreds of protests blocked access to the port, achieving a three hour delay in the unloading of the Israeli ZIM shipping line. However, 15 minutes into the protest, around 6:50 pm, police aggressively moved to arrest and charge 19 protestors, including Paul Keating, Branch Secretary of Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). They too were taken to Surry Hills Station, and charged with obstructing roads or paths, failing to comply with a move on order, and causing serious disruption while remaining near a major facility.
Palestine Justice Movement posted videos of the release of the protestors during the early hours of this morning, while NSW Police said in a statement: “The crowd was directed to move from the roadway, and given some time to do so. A number did not comply, and were arrested for disobeying police direction.”
This sustained police response has been backed by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who said, “NSW Police do an amazing job, it’s extremely difficult to always insert them in these points of contention — sometimes violence, sometimes aggro from protesters — and they keep their heads, they keep their cool and they keep the NSW public safe.”
Minns also spoke to the “major” implications in disrupting “one of the arteries of our economic growth”, and that these actions are damaging the protestors’ cause.
Honi Soit reached out to SRC President Harrison Brennan for comment:
“What we saw at the Zim Shipping protest at Port Botany on Sunday night is a reflection of the lengths the NSW police will go to protect Australia’s economic relations to an Israeli shipping company that is complicit in occupation, apartheid, and genocide. This past week we’ve seen multiple protesters be arrested by police at peaceful actions across the country. Political dissent and criticism is being actively stifled by the government in every state and territory in so-called Australia. The police are emboldened, as though they’ve been given the green light to quash any peaceful demonstration about Palestine, putting on riot gloves and brutalising innocent civilians exercising their right to assembly. But the movement in Australia calling for a free Palestine is not dwindling in response to these attacks. Every bout of state-sanctioned violence only strengthens the opposition to the police and the Labor Party’s support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
USyd’s Ethnocultural Officers said the following in a statement:
“Over the weekend we have seen NSW Police utilise punitive authority to brutally arrest pro-Palestine protesters. This is a clear result of the draconian protest laws in NSW that have stifled free speech expression. The dozens of ZIM protest arrests on Sunday night are a visceral expression of Australia’s economic and political ties with Israel and the Labor government’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians. It is also clear that NSW Police, by wearing thin blue line armbands, sees crushing pro-Palestine demonstrations as imperative to defending Australian settler society. They should know that authoritarian suppression will not deter those who fight against genocide.”
An anonymous protestor told Honi, that the ZIM protest can still be considered “a small win” for Palestine, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the cutting of economic ties with the state of Israel.
They explained that this was an action by the MUA workers, “disrupting their own workers from working on the ZIM ships” and that “it was joined by community members, activists and students.”
The police presence and violence was described as “over-the-top”, including the presence of a riot squad which specifically targeted the maritime union workers, and it’s the leadership [MUA branch secretary]. Anonymous was also told by one of the MUA workers that they had never seen this amount of police presence for anything, other than Palestine.
Anonymous reiterated the MUA workers right to protest in “their domain” amidst the “political crackdown” by the NSW Premier, Labor Party, and government institutions. They concluded that this crackdown is happening because “this kind of action actually works” and it “shows that the Australian government is more interested in taking care of its trade, its economy than standing for justice.”
Update: Legal Observers NSW and The Guardian have reported that some officers were wearing a badge with a “thin blue line” running through a black-and-white Australian flag, associated with far right and extremist groups.
Follow Legal Observers NSW on social media or visit their website to know your rights as a protestor. Send any protest footage to their email, [email protected], because there are benefits as well as risks to posting videos online.
If you would like to report a complaint regarding police brutality at protests, submit here to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
