No signs of police brutality at protests outside Parliament House on Tuesday, unlike the ugly scenes in Sydney the day before. Photo: Region.
While Liberal Party MPs and Senators were counting numbers and quitting Sussan Ley’s front bench on Thursday (12 February), Senate Estimates continued their course in the committee rooms of Parliament House.
One of the most poignant lines to be heard in one session was uttered by Foreign Minister Penny Wong when she said, “People have a right to pray in peace”.
Senator Wong was, of course, referring to the highly disturbing scenes of NSW police officers forcibly removing Muslim men kneeling in prayer outside Sydney Town Hall on Monday (9 February) during a protest against the Australian visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The men were not marching, not screaming, not blocking a roadway. They were simply praying.
Yet their prayers were interrupted as police officers grabbed them by their arms, pulled some from their feet, while vigorously pushing others away and to the ground.
Ugly scenes. Ugly police behaviour.
The aggression was compounded by the fact that the Muslim men had actually been given police permission to worship there.
There is nothing in the least bit violent about a group of people engaged in prayerful worship.
It is perhaps the very definition of peaceful protest.
Answering questions in Estimates from Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi about the incident, the Minister calmly uttered what most people must be thinking, and what everyone at every level and jurisdiction of government should be saying.
“I think Australians believe people have a right to pray in peace,” Senator Wong said.
“I believe many Australians would have found those scenes confronting, and I think it would have been particularly confronting for Muslim Australians.
“I found them confronting.
“I would say that freedom of religion and the peaceful expression of different views is a core part of who we are.”
Extremely confronting too were other scenes from Monday’s rally of police officers violently attacking protesters they had deemed to be unruly.
As though they had been hyped up watching too many videos of Donald Trump’s ICE enforcement officers killing Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, NSW police officers were seen enthusiastically punching, pinning down and pepper-spraying protesters.
They were even punching civilians lying on the ground.
The scenes of such overt and public police brutality are distressing to watch, and hard to believe they were occurring in Australia.
The following days saw further protests against President Herzog’s stops in Canberra and Melbourne, without the scenes of police brutality.
NSW Police might counter that by suggesting the protests in the nation’s capital and in the Victorian capital were not as disruptive as the gathering in Sydney.
To that, we can only repeat that the kneeling Muslim men who were set upon outside the Sydney Town Hall were praying, hardly being disruptive.
That the NSW Police hierarchy and even the State Government immediately supported the police’s actions is shocking.
Someone needs to resign – or be sacked – over what went down in Sydney on Monday.
A string of federal independent MPs and Senators and, of course, the Greens, have expressed outrage and demanded answers and accountability.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has gone so far as to say he agrees with a NSW Police review into the matter, while repeating his call for the temperature to be dialled down.
But Penny Wong’s straightforward answer in Senate Estimates has perhaps articulated the sentiment better than anyone else in government: “People have a right to pray in peace.”
Here in Australia, people also have a right to protest without fear of being beaten up by the police.
