NSW and Queensland police are raiding homes and arresting anti-genocide protesters in the latest attempts to scare the Palestine movement off the streets.
Queensland police raided the Dorothy Day House, run by a Christian charity in Brisbane, because the occupants hung a banner with the slogan “From the river to the sea, come and get us Crisafulli” from the building.
At least 30 more arrests over the Sydney protest in February against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit will occur during April and May, a senior NSW police officer told pro-Palestine lawyer Nick Hanna. Police have already charged an additional 16 people since the protest, taking the number facing charges to 27.
Last month eight masked and heavily armoured NSW police staged a 5am raid on the home of a 42-year-old woman, smashing through her door to arrest her.
The intent of the raids and arrests is to try and paint pro-Palestine protesters as instigators of a “riot” that threatened the safety of Jewish people. The government and police are trying to justify cracking down on the right to protest and the use of pro-Palestine slogans like “globalise the intifada”.
But it was the police who were the instigators of violence.
Minns continues to lie about the protest, claiming that “all of the circumstances where police are affecting an arrest … are after protesters attempted to breach police lines twice”.
But footage clearly shows the protest crowd simply standing around Town Hall and demanding the right to march by chanting “let us march” and “we will march”, before being attacked by police.
Minns justified refusing to apologise to Muslim worshippers who were praying in Town Hall square and aggressively moved on by police, claiming they “were in the middle of riot”. But video footage clearly shows the worshippers were far away from police lines and any confrontation.
The police decision to disperse protesters was intended to clear the area so that the 7000 people attending an event with Herzog across town could travel across the city. Minns has claimed that his fear was that if “protesters breached police lines and we had conflict in Sydney streets”. Yet the protest wanted to march in the opposition direction to where Herzog was speaking.
The real crime is the police violence against protesters and the attempt to whitewash the destruction of Gaza by hosting the president of an apartheid state who has incited genocide against Palestinians.
Protesting against war criminals and the complicity of our governments is not a crime. Anti-protest laws need to be broken.
By Luke Ottavi
