#criminalisationofdissent — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #criminalisationofdissent, aggregated by home.social.
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Words of NSW Police Deputy Commissioner #DavidHudson, 4th July 2025, spoken under oath during a NSW parliamentary inquiry:
“We can’t prevent the free movement of people throughout the city just because you’re in a protest. You can walk down the street, the footpath. Bearing in mind, at that particular protest at the town hall, there were a lot of women, children [and] women pushing prams. It’s not like we were going to put walls up and start boxing on with these people who have a right to protest.”
How things change in 7 months.
That's precisely what NSW police did last night at Sydney Town Hall, to another protest with people from all walks of life (including kids in strollers)—walls were put up, and police did indeed start 'boxing on', even if someone is backing away with their hands up, or kneeling on the ground in prayer, or already pinned to the ground with a knee in their back, or part of a large crowd kettled & unable to disperse (while police charge with pepper spray & horses, yelling "disperse or be arrested").
And the point at which the police first charged? Very soon after rally organiser #JoshLees had begun using a megaphone to encourage people to disperse (not that we could, due to police kettle in place).
#NSW #ProtestIsNotACrime #CriminalisationOfDissent #NSWPolice
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Chris Minns, NSW Premier: "for the sake of Social Cohesion™, we're inviting a wanted war criminal from a rogue state to visit, granting police extraordinary emergency powers to forcefully suppress the expression of non-approved messages in non-approved locations, and installing extra Social Cohesion™ fences and barriers in the middle of the city. In order to ensure maximum Social Cohesion™ please don't come into the city, and if you do, then disobeying the instructions of one of the 3,000 Social Cohesion™ officers will result in a $5,000 fine. This is for your own good. You will cohere, or else."
#NSWpol #CivilLiberties #CriminalisationOfDissent #IsaacHerzog #Herzog #ChrisMinns #NSWLabor #Gadi #Sydney #SydneyNews #NSWPolice #protest #ProtestIsNotACrime
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CW: A note to non-Australians about Australia Day, 26 January
@futzle Every year, the 26th January sees Invasion Day protest marches and other events mourning genocide and dispossession, celebrating the survival of many of the oldest continuous cultures in the world, and expressing ongoing resistance led by local Indigenous peoples across the continent.
In Gadi (Sydney), most years see tens of thousands of people march from the city to the Yabun festival in Vic Park.
This year will be especially important, given the NSW government's efforts to suppress protest in the name of 'social cohesion' (because denying people a voice has always turned out really well for long-term cohesion, right?). Organisers are planning to march, even if the government extends the anti-protest laws for another two weeks. The more people show up, the less likely it is that the authorities decide to cause trouble.
#InvasionDay #26thJan #jan26 #Auspol #Indigenous #protest #ProtestIsNotACrime #SocialCohesion #NSWpol #SuppressionOfDissent #CriminalisationOfDissent
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Today's enormous march was also a powerful repudiation of Premier Chris Minns' attempts to criminalise and demonise public protest in NSW over the last 21 months—efforts that have seen Premier Minns awarded a special medal by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, an individual many believe to be guilty of the crime of incitement to genocide due to numerous public statements he has made in support of the Netanyahu government's genocidal campaign in Gaza. Minns has faced no public consequence from his federal counterparts for accepting this award, despite the notorious origin of the award, and despite the apparent over-reach of a state government official receiving an award for a foreign power for his efforts in suppressing public criticism of that power (as a state representative, he is not meant to meddle in federal foreign policy).
Minns attempts to stifle this march were rejected by the NSW Supreme Court yesterday in a powerful ruling affirming the fact that protest will always involve inconvenience and disruption, and consequently, NSW Police were directed to facilitate rather than suppress today's march.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckirKaU8_94
#ChrisMinns #NSWpol #protest #CriminalisationOfDissent #NSWSupremeCourt #NSWpolice #IsaacHerzog #IncitementToGenocide #MarchForHumanity #Sydney #Gadigal