Sports journalist Peter Lalor was pepper-sprayed by NSW Police at the Herzog protest in Sydney. He debunks the propaganda.
I was among protestors attacked by police last night in Sydney, and while it was frightening, unnecessary and unpleasant to be assaulted with pepper spray, I didn’t understand the full extent of the violence used by police until I saw social media videos this morning.
I feel the need to speak because the government, police and usual suspects have gone on the attack to misrepresent what happened.
Tony Abbott said police should have used rubber bullets and received commendations.
Perhaps a special award can be granted to the police officer who, on seeing a young woman (pictured below) convulsing on the ground from the effects of pepper spray, proceeded to spray her twice more.
“I started having a seizure, I fell to the ground vomiting, I heard one of them say ‘she’s faking’ and they sprayed me twice again while I was on the ground,” the distressed young woman says in a video captured by Andrew Brown at Michael West Media.
And, then there’s the officers we see repeatedly punching a man they have pinned to the tram tracks.
And the officers who did the same to the other protester with a bicycle.
Or the officer that pepper sprayed another older couple.
“I was trying to shelter her, she is 70 and I said we will back off, we will back off and he just went for it three times. Straight in the face,” the man told Brown.
Let me tell you what I saw.
Sydney protest. Image: Peter Lalor
All over bar the chanting
After the speeches beside the Town Hall there was still some sense that we may be able to peacefully march a few blocks to the gardens and disperse.
Negotiations about marching continued, but we were stuck between a group of police on the Town Hall steps and the phalanx of officers on foot and horseback who’d blocked us from crossing the road to leave.
Josh was being a bit cheeky toward the police overseeing the protest, but good-humoured.
“In my opinion, I think we should say this has been a huge success, but I think it would be best if we ended on a positive note and go home,” he said.
Some chanted “let us march”, but it seemed to essentially be all over (bar the chanting).
At no point did the police attempt to tell us where to go, or warn us that they were about to attack, but attack they did. Without warning and before we could leave.
Nought to do with public safety
Next time NSW police talk about public safety …
I was with a 72-year-old woman who’d asked the police how we should get out of there, when suddenly the police charged with the horses and began pepper-spraying people.
It was a dangerous situation, the crush was terrible and people were struggling to breathe due to the effects of the poison in their lungs. Everyone was coughing and wiping their eyes. Some fell to the ground and had to be helped up. It seemed like all of us were just trying to get out of there and get away, but the police kept pushing, as you have seen.
Protestors went into survival mode, attempting to help the worst affected as we tried to move away without trampling those around us.
Naturally we will be portrayed as ratbags.
The hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year were defamed as antisemites.
The overwhelming majority of us wanted an end to the slaughter of innocents in Palestine. Nothing more, nothing less.
And then, we hear that the most senior politician in Israel, a man who has signed bombs intended for use in the murder of innocent Palestinian women and children, was not only being invited to Sydney, but the streets would be closed to Sydney citizens so he could have ease of access.
You may remember that it took a last-minute plea to the courts to allow the Sydney Harbour Bridge protest, which police and pro-genocide groups were eager to ban, to go ahead.
Australians who want peace had to argue in court for the right to do so on their own streets.
A man who is the head of the state responsible for the slaughter of so many innocent women and children, however, has the red carpet rolled out for him.
Itching for a fight?
Understandably, many Australians were outraged by this and again found themselves arguing in court for the right to make their views known in their city this week.
The NSW State government and the police were determined to stop us, and this time they won in court.
And then we were assaulted on the streets of our town by police itching for a fight.
Maybe some protestors were itching for a fight too, but everyone I saw was calm and had no stomach for such.
Most of us were trying to go home, having accepted that the police would not let us briefly march from the Town Hall to the gardens.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just allow that to happen?
Doesn’t the NSW Premier hold great stock in social cohesion?
It may have inconvenienced a few drivers for 30 minutes for the thousands of us to get to the park, a right the State Government had no hesitation in granting to a man wanted for questioning over his involvement in war crimes.
Instead, the police chose violence.
I never thought I’d end up in situations like this. Foolishly, I imagined it was morally right and acceptable to object to the atrocities being committed by Israel, but speaking up is apparently an act so egregious it sees people lose their jobs and have their reputation sullied.
Journalists are banned from covering the situation in Palestine and everyone of us is discouraged from daring even to mention it.
We are encouraged to look away and to say nothing. That’s not going to happen.