Human rights and legal experts have condemned the New South Wales government’s “escalating”, “unnuanced” and “disproportionate” rhetoric and response to pro-Palestinian protesters following a rally at the Opera House.
NSW authorities have vowed to stop marches from proceeding while protesters have promised to “march next week and every week” after a “static demonstration” in Hyde Park this Sunday.
Event co-organiser Amal Naser said they would be “out, loud and proud and we’re not going to bow down to the pressures that we’ve been experiencing from police and the premier”.
Sunday’s gathering was initially billed as a march through the city before police rejected the group’s application on the grounds it was submitted with less than a week’s notice.
Before the plan changed, the police deputy commissioner, David Hudson, had said the rally would be “unauthorised”, while conceding police “do not have the powers to stop people attending”.
The premier, Chris Minns, also pledged to crack down on protesters, saying they had already “proven they’re not peaceful” and “the idea that they’re going to commandeer Sydney streets is not going to happen”.
The police minister, Yasmin Catley, warned late on Thursday that the rally was not authorised and “strongly encourage[d]” people not to go.
“If a protest march goes ahead on the streets of Sydney, people will not be protected from certain offences,” she said.
“If people plan on attending and they want to cause fear, harm, or commit criminal offences, they could face arrest. Police commanders on the ground will be taking this incredibly seriously.”
Video from the pro-Palestine rally in Sydney on Monday showed some people in the crowd chanting “fuck the Jews” and “fuck Israel”. Event organisers claimed the troublemakers were few in number and had not been part of the broader event.
The Human Rights Law Centre’s acting legal director, Alice Drury, said the response from both the police and government had been “disproportionate” and set a “very dangerous precedent”.
Drury repeated the claim from event organisers that the people who threw flares and chanted antisemitic slurs were in the minority. She said antisemitism should never be tolerated and neither should silencing peaceful protesters.
“The actions of a few people who weren’t even known to the protest organisers can’t be used as an excuse to prevent Palestinian communities from coming together to speak out about what’s happening in their home,” she said.
“The NSW government’s response has been unnuanced and disproportionate in preventing or attempting to prevent the protest from going ahead.”
Drury said governments across the country had been “cracking down” on protests with more intensity in recent years but none more so than in NSW, where she pointed to tough new penalties for protesters that were controversially introduced last year.
With Labor’s support, the former Coalition government passed laws in April 2022 to impose fines of up to $22,000 and jail sentences of up to two years for people found to be protesting illegally on public roads, rail lines, and industrial estates.
The energy minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government had made it “very clear” that people should not participate in what would be an “unauthorised” rally on Sunday.
She warned that anyone who attended the event and did “the wrong thing” would feel “the full force of the law”.
“It’s pretty clear they applied to do a rally. That has been rejected. This gathering is now an unauthorised gathering,” Sharpe said.
NSW Council of Civil Liberties president, Josh Pallas, believed Sunday’s rally could not be deemed unauthorised because it would be held in a park and not block any roads.
“We all have the right to protest and engage in free speech,” he said.
He said there had been an “increasing escalation in terms of rhetoric and response to protest”.
Pallas’s comments came after Catley said on Tuesday: “I don’t want to see protests on our street at all, from anybody. I don’t think anybody really does.”
Prof Charles Sampford, an accountability roundtable board member, said people had the right to peacefully voice their views regardless of whether others agreed with them.
“The actions of Hamas are inexcusable and clearly a war crime,” he said.
“But this doesn’t mean that those who also believe that there have been war crimes committed by Israel shouldn’t be given the opportunity to express their views … in peaceful demonstrations.”
The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president, David Ossip, earlier this week welcomed the premier’s apology for allowing the Opera House march to proceed.
“The Jewish community of Sydney will long remember the infamy and disgrace of what transpired,” he said. “We are grateful for the additional resources that NSW police are dedicating to ensure the security of the Jewish community.”
