Repression of activism is escalating
The past two years have seen laws passed in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia specifically aimed at criminalising civil society actors who engage in protest to protect forests, waterways and our climate. Undemocratic legislation has given police even more power to close down democratic space. Policing in Western Australia and NSW has been particularly repressive, with activists facing counter-terror police squads and inflated charges for ordinary, non violent protest activity.
The repression of activism we are facing is everybody’s business. When people are charged with ‘conspiracy to commit an offence’ just for thinking about protesting, and then face a year of ‘non association’ conditions, meaning that they are prohibited from communicating with their friends or community, we have a crisis of repression on our hands.
Now Wage Peace has been targeted by the NSW police, after we disrupted a weapons dealers luxury cruise. Read our story here:
The protest at King’s Wharf, Gadigal country
Our friends disrupted the arms dealers at the cash-for-ministerial-contact schmooze fest on the eve of the Indo Pacific weapons expo in Gadi / Sydney.
Banners were held. Truths were told. Bodies were used to stop the AMDA events managers from whacking and pushing people. #StopArmingIsrael #StopBombingGaza. Stop taking tens of billions a year from Australian taxpayers and giving it to private weapons corporations. We need everything we’ve got right now for #EarthcareNotWarfare.
Statement from Wage Peace
Regarding the resistance that was live streamed from Wage Peace social media accounts on the night of Monday the 6th of November 2023:
The action on Monday night was a non harmful act of resistance to the weapons trade, which is currently profiting from the siege on Gaza. The intention of the action was to draw attention to the fact that there are corporations and individuals in this world who profit from the sale of weapons, and thus have a vested interest in the continuation and escalation of armed conflicts around the world. The scale of the destruction currently being wrought on Palestinian people warrants a response from the general public, and our response was to draw attention to the corporate actors who benefit from genocide, being obliged as they are to maximise returns for their shareholders.
We non-violently disrupted a group of arms dealers as they boarded their dinner cruise, organized in connection with the Indo-Pacific Naval Exposition. This involved standing in their path as they attempted to board the Starship Sydney. Many of the arms dealers being prevented from boarding their cruise became aggressive toward us, and can be seen on the live stream videos pushing, shoving, and sometimes punching our people. Some of our people had to leave the protest space out of concern for their safety, including one person who was experiencing dizziness after being punched in the head. Before the passengers began boarding, some of the cruise organisers approached the people with megaphones and hit/ripped them out of their hands. Our people did not retaliate, because the intention of the gathering was to take a principled stance against genocide and call for a ceasefire. We went to King Street Wharf to bring our message directly to the employees of the companies that arm the Israeli Defence Forces.
At the time of writing, eight people have been arrested and charged in connection with this act of non-violent resistance, and have been given five charges, most notably unlawful assembly. An element of the unlawful assembly charge is the intent to use violence. At the time of arrest we were holding banners and chanting – ordinary protest activity. This comes as part of an ongoing and deliberate strategy by the NSW police to conflate non-compliance and disobedience with the intention to cause harm. We emphatically reject the accusation of intent to harm. In our resistance we impose only two rules on our allies and associates, the first of which is to do no physical harm to living beings. This is evidenced in our invitation to Disrupt Land Forces 2021 and 2022, and our invitation to Disrupt Sea Forces 2023, all of which are available on our website. Furthermore, once we were formally issued a move on direction, everyone moved on and left the area.
The NSW Police are out of control, and their response to civil resistance is disproportionate, heavy handed, and a total waste of policing resources.
Strategic Incapacitation
Policing of disruptive protest follows a pattern. The pattern begins with the characterization of protest activity as ‘unlawful’ and ‘violent’, through the conflation of an act of non-compliance with an intent to cause harm. There is no such thing as ‘unlawful protest’. Individuals might break laws while at a protest, but the act of protest itself is never unlawful. The growing use of the concept of ‘unlawful protest’ and the construction of ‘non-compliance’ as ‘violence’ creates space for unwarranted arrests. Once arrested, people are treated as though absolutely guilty. Police routinely apply inflated charges. With the inflated charges come onerous bail conditions and increased surveillance of civil society actors. Their strategy is to lay serious, inflated charges, then use the seriousness of the charges to impose bail conditions which effectively prevent people from participating in political activity. They then continuously adjourn the case to keep people on those bail conditions for as long as possible. The intention behind this strategy is to take people out of social movements, and break the network of relationships that sustain social movements. This is achieved through excessive non-association conditions, restrictions on a person’s movement and where they may reside, excessive reporting conditions that prevent people from travelling to participate in resistance, and heavy surveillance and targeted policing of individuals they have identified as participants.
We assert that the violence caused by the defence contracts held by the companies represented on the cruise that we disrupted is the issue that needs to be addressed. The Australian Defence Export Office has issued 322 export permits to Israel in the last six years, and weapons companies around the world continue to flout human rights agreements by arming Israel with full knowledge of the atrocities their products will be used to commit. Our act of resistance was a refusal to stand by as a genocide unfolds before our eyes.
We assert that the NSW police are more interested in protecting the property rights than human rights. Either those of the Palestinian people being indiscriminately bombed by a military power, or those of the people on this continent who seek to resist and disrupt state sanctioned violence in whatever ways they have available to them.
The police are currently deploying sophisticated equipment, technologies, and practices to protect arms dealers from the people calling for a ceasefire.
We assert that the real violence has been, and continues to be, perpetrated by the global weapons trade, and the security forces who protect it. We are, and have always been, a non-violent network committed to a world where everyone has the ability to love, be loved, be safe, be respected, and be free. From Western Sydney to West Papua to the West Bank, we demand a ceasefire.
Community statement in solidarity with Wage Peace
We Don’t Live in a Democracy We Live in a Hypocrisy
Protesters targeted in continued display of NSW Police overreach.
This week, Sydney’s ICC hosted The Indo Pacific Naval Expo, the biggest arms conference in the region, in which government and arms dealers showcased and sold weapons for international export. A series of protests organised by Wage Peace and other allies were conducted to object to corporate profiteering at a time of intense warfare, when such weapons are killing civilians across the world. The Protesters have been subjected to severe repression by NSW Police, who have once again been deployed at a massive scale to squash public dialogue.
Two protesters were arrested on the foreshore Tuesday morning in front of the ICC. They were charged with unlawful public assembly. In what world is two people holding banners an unlawful assembly, in what world is this an unacceptable risk to the public? They were detained all day before given an ultimatum: sign bail and leave Sydney immediately or be held on remand.
The morning after her arrest one of this pair was again targeted by police and re-arrested for not fleeing Sydney fast enough. All this for holding a banner and speaking through a megaphone. This is just one example in a slew of police abuses. Most arrestees this week have been given non-association orders as part of their bail, as well as an order to refrain from any protest activity. Activists have been followed in cars and on foot, stalked outside their residences, and physically assaulted by police. This kind of silencing is a tactic of NSW police that makes public protest in Sydney almost impossible.
The excessive use of police resources against protesters is a contrived effort that has escalated drastically in the last 2 years. The tactics deployed with the formation of Strike Force Guard last year to target climate activists has extended to most areas of public dissent. That the city platforms and funds a weapons conference, whilst expelling any opposition, is revealing of the deep political bias towards the military-industrial economy. Policing trends and warfare trends are interlinked. As Australian institutions and governments export arms, coal, gas, they bring in profit. And they will crash tackle anyone who stands in the way, literally.
The conference featured companies like Thales, Elbit Systems, and BAE, who are directly supplying arms to the genocide in Gaza, and profiting off the loss of human life.
Strike forces previously reserved for targeting violent gangs are being used to silence any dissent against climate destruction, arms dealing, and government corruption.
For simply taking part in a protest, activists in NSW have been subjected to mobile phone surveillance, intimidation and stalking. Climate activists have been charged with ‘intent to commit an offence’, for simply planning to protest; resulting in large scale home raids where helicopters and dog squads have been deployed.
The crown jewel of the Strike Force repression plan is the application of restrictive bail conditions. Since last year, when arrested activists have been given the choice between prison and a list of conditions that prevent them from taking part in any political act. They have their freedom of movement and communication tightly regulated. Police have weaponised bail by ordering non-associations, place restrictions, and ordering arrestees to not engage in any protest activity. This is part of a continual strategic plan to the degrade civil rights of activists, particularly ones who oppose corporate and institutional power.
This is all a stark indicator of authoritarianism; ‘your release depends on your silence.’ Most concerning is that police powers are expanding into every area of public life. The deployment of hundreds of police at tax-payers expense, for one weapons conference, should elicit public outcry. What we saw in Sydney this week was war criminals defended by armed police, whilst peaceful protesters were jailed and assaulted. Where is the justice in that scenario?
The actions of NSW Police are intended to show us that standing against the profits of the elite means intimidation and incarceration. Even voicing such a stance is seemingly enough to be locked up.
To face this daunting opposition we need to build our collective resistance. Recognise that our plights are intertwined and show solidarity in word and deed. The War machine, the climate crisis, the divide between rich and poor and the attack on indigenous rights are coming from the same system, a system defended rigorously by the police. We need to work to dismantle their power on every possible level. In the courts and on the streets and show that we will not be deterred, that together we the people must take power back from those who will use it for destruction.
However and wherever you can,