Australian leaders yesterday urged calm and called on protests to remain peaceful after clashes between police and demonstrators opposing Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia erupted in Sydney.
Police said 27 people were arrested, including 10 for allegedly assaulting officers, after violence broke out on Monday evening when police moved in to clear thousands of protesters who had gathered near Sydney’s town hall.
Protesters, including an opposition lawmaker, yesterday said they had been assaulted by officers.
Photo: Reuters
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was “devastated” by the violence and urged protesters to express their views peacefully.
“Australians want two things. They don’t want conflict brought here. They want killing to stop, whether it’s Israelis or Palestinians, but they do not want conflict brought here,” Albanese told radio station Triple M.
“The causes are not advanced by these sorts of scenes — they are undermined,” he said.
Photo: AFP
There were no reports of serious injuries, New South Wales state police said in a statement.
Thousands gathered in central Sydney on Monday to protest against Herzog’s visit to Australia, which comes after a mass shooting at a Jewish religious event at Bondi Beach in December that killed 15 people.
Police had been authorized to use rarely invoked powers during the protest, including directing crowds to move, restricting their entry to certain areas and searching vehicles. A legal challenge to those restrictions was dismissed by a Sydney court on Monday. Herzog was not present at the protest site.
Television footage showed some protesters trying to push through blockades as officers forced them back. Some were seen lying on the ground while police tried to restrain them.
Police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns defended police actions, saying officers were required to make rapid decisions in tense and volatile situations, and urged calm.
“I understand there’s criticisms of New South Wales Police, I just want to make it clear they were caught in an impossible situation,” he told a press conference.
In a statement, the Palestine Action Group Sydney said protesters were unable to leave the event, because they were surrounded by police on all sides.
“The police began charging the crowd with horses, indiscriminately pepper spraying the crowd, punching and arresting people,” the group said.
Abigail Boyd, an opposition Green lawmaker in the state parliament, said she had been punched by officers while attempting to vacate the site.
“I have a very sore arm and shoulder where they punched me. I’m really in shock,” she told a press conference.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said police actions were justified and that they showed restraint.
“Police did what they needed to do, which was to hold the line and then form and move the protesters back with a view to dispersing them,” he said.
“Having an angry and violent mob marching on police is not a situation that I want our officers in,” he said.
Palestine Action Group Sydney head Josh Lees said that supporters of the group would rally outside police headquarters in the city last night in response to Monday’s clashes.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS