Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country yesterday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis.
“March for Australia” rallies against immigration were held in Sydney, and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s Web site.
“Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the Web site said.
Photo: AFP
The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.”
The group also said it was concerned about culture, wages, traffic, housing and water supply, environmental destruction, infrastructure, hospitals, crime and loss of community.
Australia — where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas — has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis.
Photo: AFP
“We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony,” Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television when asked about the rally in Sydney, the country’s most-populous city.
“We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,” Watt said, adding that they were “organized and promoted” by neo-Nazi groups.
March for Australia organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the neo-Nazi claims.
Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia this year in response to a string of anti-Semitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
Some 5,000 to 8,000 people, many draped in Australian flags, had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) said.
It was held near the course of the Sydney Marathon, where 35,000 runners pounded the streets yesterday, finishing at the city’s Opera House.
Also nearby, a counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a community activist organization, took place.
“Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far-right agenda of March For Australia,” a coalition spokesperson said in a statement.
Organizers said hundreds attended the event.
Police said hundreds of officers were deployed across Sydney in an operation that ended “with no significant incidents.”
A large March for Australia rally was held in central Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, according to aerial footage from the ABC, which reported that riot officers used pepper spray on demonstrators.
Australian Member of Parliament Bob Katter, the leader of a small populist party, attended a March for Australia rally in Queensland, a party spokesperson said, three days after the veteran lawmaker threatened a reporter for mentioning Katter’s Lebanese heritage at a press conference when the topic of his attendance at the rally was being discussed.
Katter was “swarmed with hundreds of supporters” at the rally in Townsville, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail reported.
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