Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown On Pro-Hezbollah Speech

Caitlin Johnstone

Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown On Pro-Hezbollah Speech

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

As Israel begins another invasion of Lebanon, Australian officials from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide have been falling all over themselves to get Australians punished for speech crimes about the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.

The Australian political-media class have been in an uproar ever since footage surfaced of people waving Hezbollah flags at a protest in Melbourne over the weekend and displaying pictures of the group’s deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Friday. 

After initially stating that no crime had been committed in these acts of political speech, Victoria police are now saying they have identified six potentially criminal incidents related to the demonstration. These incidents reportedly involve “prohibited symbols” in violation of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment which was enacted last year. 

Needless to say, free nations do not have “prohibited symbols”.

This development follows numerous statements from various Australian leaders denouncing the protests as criminal.

“I expect the police agencies to pursue this,” Victorian premier Jacinta Allan said of the protests, adding, “Bringing grief and pain and division to the streets of Melbourne by displaying these prohibited symbols, is utterly unacceptable.”

Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong took to Twitter to denounce the protesters, saying Australians must not only refrain from supporting Hezbollah but from even giving “any indication of support”.

“We condemn any indication of support for a terrorist organisation such as Hizballah,” Wong tweeted, adding, “It not only threatens national security, but fuels fear and division in our communities.”

 

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke wants to deport any international visitors displaying prohibited symbols in Australia, saying “I won’t hesitate to cancel the visas of visitors to our country who are spreading hate.”

On the other side of the aisle, opposition leader Peter Dutton is on a crusade to get new laws passed to ensure the elimination of banned symbols from public view, saying “enforcement for law is required and if there are laws that need to be passed to make sure that our values are upheld then the Prime Minister should be doing that.”

“Support for a proscribed terrorist organisation has no place on the streets of Melbourne,” tweeted Labor MP Josh Burns. “Anyone breaking counter-terrorism legislation should face the full force of the law.”

“Australians cherish the right to peaceful protest,” tweeted independent MP Zoe Daniels. “However, there is no justification for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation. Those who were seen doing so on the streets of Melbourne at protests yesterday should be investigated and prosecuted.”

 

In an article titled “Hezbollah flags at protests shape as test of new hate-symbol laws,” the ABC reports that these legal efforts to stomp out dissenting political speech are made possible by laws which were recently passed with the official intention of targeting Nazi symbols, but which “also cover the symbols of listed terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah.” Which is about as strong an argument on the slippery slope of government censorship as you could possibly ask for.

Hezbollah is listed as a “terrorist organisation” on the say-so of the Australian government, not because of its actions or methods but because it stands in opposition to the US power alliance of which Australia is a part. This arbitrary designation is smeared across any resistance group on earth which opposes the dictates of Washington, and can then be used to suppress the speech of anyone who disagrees with the murderous behavior of the western empire.

And it should here be noted that Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

“Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.

“Why then is Australia the exception? The answer lies in our history. Although many think of Australia as a young country, constitutionally speaking, it is one of the oldest in the world. The Australian Constitution remains almost completely as it was when enacted in 1901, while the Constitutions of the Australian states can go back as far as the 1850s. The legal systems and Constitutions of the nation and the Australian colonies (and then states) were conceived at a time when human rights, with the prominent exception of the 1791 United States Bill of Rights, tended not to be protected through a single legal instrument. Certainly, there was then no such law in the United Kingdom, upon whose legal system ours is substantially based. This has changed, especially after World War II and the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but by then Australia’s system of government had been operating for decades.”

 

If you ever wonder why Australia so often stands out as a freakish anomaly in the western world with its jarring authoritarianism and disregard for human rights, this is why. 

The powerful abuse our civil rights because they can. We are pummeled with propaganda in the birthplace of Rupert Murdoch and increasingly forbidden from speaking out against the atrocities of our government and its allies overseas. We are being groomed into mindless, obedient sheep for the empire.

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