NSW Premier Chris Minns has defended NSW Police after footage and eyewitness accounts of their actions at Sydney’s Isaac Herzog protest received widespread criticism.
NSW Police were accused of using excessive force during their operation around the event, which took place at Town Hall on Monday night in protest of the Israeli President’s Australian visit. Sydneysiders showed up despite the court decision to block the protest from moving through the CBD, instead confining the protest to Town Hall.
Police arrested 27 protesters, including 10 for allegedly assaulting police. Shocking videos showed officers rushing the crowd, deploying pepper spray and using batons.
An officer was seen punching a man who had his hands up in one clip, while another widely-circulated video showed officers forcibly dispersing a group of Muslim protestors who were praying.
Minns adamantly defended NSW Police when addressing media this morning. He claimed police were dealing with “an impossible situation” during the protest and that “short clips” circulating online do not show the context of police action.
“It’s worth remembering [police] did everything possible to avoid confrontation,” Minns said on the Today show. “I’m not going to throw police under the bus this morning.”
Minns said that police were tasked with keeping the protestors separate from the thousands of Jewish mourners who were in the same area of the CBD last night.
“What we can say today that we couldn’t say yesterday is that we had 7,000 Jewish mourners in the same city at the same time, and police had to keep those two groups apart,” Minns said.
The premier claimed the violent scenes “should not have happened”, citing NSW Police’s request for protestors to move the event from Town Hall to Hyde Park last week.
Minns doubled down on his defence of the police in other media statements, accusing protestors of “repeatedly” breaching police lines and saying Sydneysiders were “running amok” as officers responded during what was “in effect, the middle of a riot”.
“Police did their duty,” Minns told Sky News. He also wrote on social media that “the NSW Government makes no apology for putting community safety first”.
Palestine Action Group, which organised the protest, wrote on social media that it “utterly condemn[s] the brutal attack by the NSW Police”, claiming officers “resorted to unleashing unseen violent repression”.
“The police, Chris Minns and the whole political establishment should hang their heads in shame for this disgusting attack on democracy and freedom of political expression,” the group wrote.
Meanwhile, Palestine Action Group spokesperson Shovan Bhattarai said “the only riot that occurred last night was a police riot” and described the policing operation as a “massive outrage”.
Addressing police’s actions against the Muslim prayer group specifically, the premier said officers’ response “wasn’t designed to pick on or target a particular community”.
More than 100 Muslim organisations condemned the footage in a joint statement shared after the protest, describing it as “completely unacceptable”.
“Police officers knowingly intervened in a moment of religious observance, forcibly interrupted prayer and used physical force against individuals who posed no threat to public safety,” the statement read.
It comes amid heavy scrutiny over NSW Police’s handling of the protest, which has only intensified this morning.
Greens justice spokesperson Sue Higginson slammed the police operation as “corporal punishment against a peaceful community”, while NSW Labor backbencher Anthony D’Adam, who attended the rally, said he “personally witnessed disgusting and excessive police violence which needs to be investigated”.
“They grabbed someone and threw them on to the ground,” D’Adam told The Guardian, adding that “it just seemed totally over‑the‑top in terms of the police reaction”.
Thousands of protestors assembled last night to protest Herzog’s visit, which was framed on one side as an act of solidarity after the Bondi massacre and on the other as an outrage given the Israeli President’s implicit involvement in alleged atrocities in Gaza.
More nationwide protests are planned for this week as Herzog’s Australian visit continues.
Lead images: Getty Images
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