Victoria Police pepper sprayed a “large section of the crowd” at Melbourne’s Free Palestine rally on Sunday, affecting children as young as eight-years-old, according to organisers, while police said “disgusting” and “vulgar” behaviour from the protestors resulted in the deployment of OC spray.
“On Sunday, we held the 35th consecutive march against the genocide of Gaza,” Free Palestine Melbourne member and rally organiser Tasnim Sammak told VICE.
“We gathered as we have been since October in front of the State Library.”
Sammak said there were already “negotiations” with police before the rally about parking and the set-up of the stage that “set the tone for the day”.
“The police have been putting our marches under a lot of pressure for a number of weeks,” she said.
Tensions in parliament over pro-Palestine protests have been escalating as Anthony Albanese last week condemned several protests held at politicians’ offices.
Albanese said these protests that “intimidate” politicians had “no place in a democracy”. He and opposition leader Peter Dutton also accused the Greens and leader Adam Bandt of misrepresenting Labor and the Coalition’s stances on Gaza and encouraging “violent” protests.
Sunday’s rally commenced as usual. Lots of people stood, listened to speeches, including from Bandt, applauded and chanted, before slowly beginning the march up Swanston Street and Bourke Street to Parliament.
Early in the march, one member of the public held a coloured smoke emitter, something often used in gender reveals, that let out green smoke. These are legal to use without a permit in Australia.
Police said it looked like a flare.
“At one point officers were attempting to obtain the identity of a person who ignited what appeared to be a flare when they were confronted by a crowd of about 200 protestors,” a Victoria Police spokesperson told VICE.
Sammak said despite the smoke being emitted on Swanston Street, as VICE captured on video at the scene, the police, who were stationed all alone the march route, didn’t attempt to take that person aside until they had reached parliament.
“That’s when they decided to go up to that person. From our perspective this instigated a confrontation point with the demonstration,” Sammak said.
“It was very dense, people were crowding to listen to the last few speeches before they went home. It was in front of the Windsor Hotel where the Parliament Station entry is, so a very small corner and that added to the number of casualties when police deployed pepper spray because they sprayed basically onto the crowd.”
Sammak said the youngest child affected, who was eight, was treated because the spray landed on his scarf which he then used to rub his eyes. Several other children were in the crowd when the spray was deployed and treated at the scene, as well as elderly people and one pregnant woman.
“The kids’ eyes were stinging, there were people all across Spring Street and the medics, as well as the marshals who have some training were treating one person after another and we also had to have community members volunteer to take guidance from the medics to do the decontamination and that’s a scene that was quite traumatising for the community,” Sammak said.
“Frontline medics have said they treated over 60 injured people.”
The Victoria Police spokesperson called it an “ugly encounter” and said “the group was extremely hostile and turned violent, throwing bottles and signs at police [and] OC spray was subsequently deployed and the group dispersed.”
They said no arrests were made but three infringement notices for illegally parked vehicles in the vicinity of the demonstration were handed out, and they added scene investigators would be reviewing footage to “identify offenders” in the incident, although they didn’t say for what charges or actions.
This isn’t the first time OC spray has been used on Free Palestine protestors. Officers used it on a crowd in Altona earlier this month and on protestors in Port Melbourne in January.
The spokesperson said the “high police presence” at protests would continue and that “While we support the right to protest peacefully we will not tolerate the kind of vulgar behaviour our officers were confronted with”.
Sammak said there’s been a heavy police presence at Free Palestine protests for years since a bulk of the anti-terror legislation was introduced after the September 11 attacks in 2001. But she said the recent inflammation in parliament and the government’s narrative that these rallies are “violent”.
“Political attacks and police attacks come together as a way to achieve repression when there is opposition in society and that is quite frightening and we call on people to stand in solidarity with the families with the children with the communities that have been affected,” she said.
Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.
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