Saturday, 29 Rabi’ Awaal 1445 AH | 14th October 2023 CE | No.: 1445 / 03
NSW Police are gearing up to deploy extraordinary powers enabling unprecedented capacity to harass and prosecute pro-Palestine protesters. The powers give police the ability to stop and search without cause, to demand identification, to disperse individuals from gatherings that would otherwise be considered lawful, and arrest or fine for non-compliance. Measures that replicate the checkpoints of the criminal occupation itself.
This follows brazen and outlandish bipartisan efforts from the Prime Minister down to deliberately misrepresent the conflict in Palestine by sympathising with the occupiers whilst demonising their resisters. Similar unprecedented efforts have been made in other Western states applying extraordinary pressure upon pro-Palestine voices, criminalising its support, demanding the removal of the Islamic equation in this conflict and offering carte blanche cover for Zionist crimes.
At the same time, NSW has recently introduced additional draconian measures ostensibly aimed at combating ‘hate speech’. Similar laws are being introduced on a federal level but have not yet passed. These laws seek to criminalise political resistance, where such resistance would not ordinarily meet the criteria required for prosecution under existing terrorism or counter-extremism laws. Prosecuting support for Palestine and its resistance will be the cornerstone of these new laws.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia says the following in this regard:
1. Western states are singularly responsible for the horror that has been Palestine for the last 75 years. It was Britain that captured these lands, violated its sanctities, and handed it over, proclaiming it a “Jewish homeland” to serve Western interests. Australia’s assistance in the capturing of Palestine is still appallingly celebrated to this day.
2. Western states are the biggest criminal states. The occupation of Palestine happened at their hands. The genocide of its people happened at their hands. The expulsion of its inhabitants happened at their hands. The unending suffering of its people continues to happen at their hands.
3. The impending disaster that is amassing around Gaza is directly on the hands of Western states. Anything that happens henceforth is further blood on already blood-soaked hands. Western states are responsible for the facilitation of the Zionist occupation. They are responsible for its sustenance; politically, economically and militarily. They are responsible for demonising the occupied whilst excusing the occupier. As they facilitated the first Nakba, so too are they facilitating the second.
4. We reiterate the need to persist in the resistance to Zionist occupation and every iteration of Western occupation. Western states are criminal. They are hypocritical. They are self-serving without a single ounce of humanity. They kill millions themselves and are happy to watch on when others kill millions more. They will criminalise every form of resistance. They will demonise every form of dissent. They will hide behind their empty slogans, their propaganda pieces, their flaky laws and hollow civilisational claims. Let the world see them for who they really are.
End.
Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia
