Australian police are stepping up their attacks on anti-genocide protesters

Police in the Australian state of Victoria have made a wave of arrests as part of a growing attack on the democratic rights of protesters demonstrating against Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide against Gaza.

Another 12 people have been arrested in connection with the September 11 protest against the International Land Defense Exposition in the state capital of Melbourne. This is in addition to the 89 people who were charged or fined that day.

Mounted police at anti-war protest in Melbourne, September 11, 2024

The expo brought together representatives of the government and the largest arms manufacturers in the world. The demonstrators centrally emphasized the conference’s role as a hub for planning the war crimes committed by Israel and its sponsors in the major capitalist centers, including the US and Australia.

These clear anti-war and humane sentiments were overshadowed by the political and media establishment, which tried to portray the demonstrators as a hysterical and dangerous gang.

About 1,800 police officers were mobilized for the event, which was attended by only a few thousand protesters. The Public Order Response Team (PORT), effectively riot police, used ‘flashbang’ stun grenades, shot ‘foam’ rubber bullets and indiscriminately fired tear gas against entire groups of demonstrators, including those who were moving away from or standing at a distance who posed was not found to be a danger to the police.

Yet Victoria Police claim it was the police who were violently attacked.

Like the Socialist World Website The mobilization of police, coordinated by the state and federal Labor governments, was a clear provocation, designed to create an atmosphere in which the demonstrators could be branded as violent.

Since the event, arrested protesters have been charged with crimes including “affair” and “hindering/obstructing police.” One protester has been charged with ‘animal cruelty’ for attacking a mounted police officer. Of course, it wasn’t the protesters who knowingly dragged the horses into the maelstrom of a protest against which the police were clearly prepared to use force.

The arrest of a protester, Jasmine Duff, at her home last month was filmed. Duff is a member of the Socialist Alternative organization.

The footage shows five police officers arresting the young woman and entering her share house without a warrant – permitted by the Crimes Act. Duff told the WSWS that an armed female police officer stayed in the protester’s room while she was changing, in case she tried to escape.

Duff and several other protesters are scheduled to appear in court on November 21.

Police have also released images of more than 20 protesters from the September 11 demonstration whom they want to question, calling on the public to help identify the individuals.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has also confirmed that fourteen people are now under investigation for allegedly flying the banned Hezbollah flag during a protest in Melbourne on September 29. The protests came in the wake of the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with hundreds of civilians in Beirut, Lebanon, by US-Israeli bombs.

Hezbollah, one of Lebanon’s largest political parties, was listed as a terrorist organization in Australia in 2021 in a hasty process that also involved the input of Zionist lobbyists.

The AFP told a Senate estimate this week that 1,100 hours of footage, including police bodycam and CCTV, had been reviewed to identify 14 people “under investigation for displaying a symbol of a banned terrorist organization in a public place.” ”

Search warrants have been issued for three of these individuals and another three protesters have been spoken to by police. The AFP also said it seized mobile phones and an item of clothing with the banned symbol.

In recent weeks, the Labor state and federal governments, police and media have threatened a witch hunt against anyone flying the Hezbollah flag. A 19-year-old woman in Sydney was arrested last month and charged with allegedly displaying a terrorist symbol, a serious criminal offence. She attended rallies on the same day as the fourteen Melbourne protesters now under investigation.

Immediately after the September 29 protests, federal Labor government Home Secretary Tony Burke said he would “consider refusing and revoking visas” of non-citizens caught flying the Hezbollah flag .

In a statement on the protesters being investigated for displaying the Hezbollah flag released yesterday, Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney warned that the AFP is beginning to consider that protests against the ongoing US-Israeli attack in the Middle East could be “the inciting violence against groups or advocating violence against groups”. terrorism.”

All this has the character of a coordinated action by the state, with an unmistakable authoritarian and dictatorial character. Young people in particular are targeted.

Police arrest a Western Sydney University student for anti-genocide protest (Photo: WSU 4 Palestine Collective)

This was highlighted by the violent arrest of three students at Western Sydney University last month for their involvement in a peaceful campus protest against Israel’s war crimes.

Since the genocide began over a year ago, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has been one of the most vocal proponents of Israel’s so-called “right to defend itself”, justifying the war crimes being committed. Through its military alliances with American and British imperialism, Australia has undoubtedly been a major player, providing logistical support to Israel’s bombing campaigns as it has attempted to exterminate the population of Gaza and the West Bank and its push into Yemen to spread. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and now Iran.

The Albanian government has taken the lead in fraudulently denouncing anti-genocide protesters as anti-Semitic. Now the government openly declares that supporting the Palestinian and Lebanese people being slaughtered by Israel is ‘terrorism’.

This is a stark warning. The anti-democratic attacks on demonstrators are not only aimed at opposition to the genocide, but at hostility to war more broadly.

They come amid Australia’s active support for the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, and preparations for the country to play a central role in US-led plans for a catastrophic conflict with China.

This broader context highlights the bankruptcy of the dominant line put forward by protest leaders, namely that a moral appeal to those in power can end government support for the genocide. This perspective, put forward by the pseudo-left, including Socialist Alternative, is an attempt to defuse growing anti-war sentiment and redirect the opposition back to the parties complicit in the genocide.

The fight against genocide and war requires a diametrically opposed perspective. That is the independent mobilization of the working class against the Labor government, the entire pre-war political establishment and the capitalist system that is the source of increasing barbarism. Workers must take up freedom of expression and the right to protest as part of this fight.