A Paramilitary Victoria Police Greets Disrupt Land Forces with Its Entire Arsenal

Politicians have proven once again that police are their attack dogs, and not their to protect justice let alone the public.

The streets of Naarm-Melbourne were on fire early Wednesday morning as Victoria police greeted the planned Disrupt Land Forces demonstration against Land Forces 2024, the largest arms trade show in the southern hemisphere, with its entire arsenal of nonlethal – but potentially very damaging if not deadly – weaponry.

A planned rally on Wednesday morning against “the one stop genocide shop” involved thousands of nonviolent demonstrators gathering on the Spencer Street Bridge, close by the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), the site of the weapons expo, and the civilians were met by a paramilitary police force.

The scene from the front of the protest, as confirmed by multiple social media activists’ feeds, consisted of line upon line of police officers decked out in riot gear, with helmets, armed with a range of chemical and projectile weaponry. Front row police were carrying shields, which allowed other officers to fire flashbang grenades into the crowd. And the back row was formed by mounted police.

“They have been shooting into the crowd,” said Extinction Rebellion’s Violet CoCo, via her social media feed, as she identified stun grenades, pepper spray and rifles that have the potential to fire nonlethal projectiles into a crowd of civilians, all being on hand if VicPol found it necessary to apply such force.

And the chant that activists facing off against the heavily armed state law enforcement body on the bridge were using really sums up where our liberal democracy is at right now, as those holding the megaphones called out “hands up” and all others responded with “don’t shoot”.

Victoria splashes out on policing

The ABC reported that in confronting Disrupt Land Forces protesters on Wednesday, Victoria police had been using stun grenades and pepper spray as “crowd control measures”, with some journalists having reported that rubber bullets had been fired, while Victoria police had told the national broadcaster, it had not used tear gas on protesters, but it did not confirm what had been applied.

Victoria police had been warning for weeks that it was planning the largest counterprotest operation it has unleashed since the S11 demonstrations of September 2000, which involved antiglobalisation protesters countering a meeting of the World Economic Forum that took place at the Melbourne Crown Casino, which is right next to the current MCEC site.

Victoria Labor treasurer Tim Pallas announced on Tuesday that the state had set aside up to anywhere between $10 to $15 million in extra funding for Victoria police operations targeting DLF protests, as 1,800 officers have been deployed to the site, with some having been shipped in from regional Victoria, while NSW police has too deployed some of its riot officers south of the border.

The state’s police minister, Anthony Carbines, wouldn’t reveal how many interstate specialist officers were deployed to Naarm to counter protests, but he did state that “there’s nothing but disrespect being shown from some of the protesters, who want to behave like idiots”, and he then gave special thanks to all out-of-town officers, who are in the city to “keep the community safe”.

A one stop genocide shop

But the reason why, as the minister put it, some protesters are behaving like “idiots” is because the city is facilitating weapons deals that arms manufacturers and governments alike cannot ensure won’t be used to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. In fact, they can almost guarantee that such breaches of international law are being cooked up inside the MCEC.

And Land Forces 2024 is garnering more attention than the biannual arms trade show usually has in the past, when it was being held in Meanjin-Brisbane, as for the last 11 months the Israeli military has been committing genocide upon the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and instead of any slowing down of this illegal operation, Tel Aviv is now escalating military incursions into the West Bank.

“It’s basically a shop selling death machines, and governments will be going there with taxpayers’ money to buy weapons to be used against us, which includes carrying out genocide in multiple places around the world,” Disrupt Land Forces organiser Nathalie Farah told Sydney Criminal Lawyers a fortnight ago.

“Some of the companies that are going are massive multibillion dollar companies, such as Elbit, an Israeli company, Lockheed Martin, NIOA, Boeing and Thales,” the Palestinian Syrian activist, who has “witnessed the horrors of war firsthand”, made clear. “And there will also be hundreds of smaller suppliers as well.”

Free for all policing reigns

As Melbourne Activists Legal Support (MALS) warned last week, not only does Victoria police have its exceptional range of nonlethal weapons out on display this week, but officers are also packing some extra powers under their belts, as the MCEC and its surrounds have been declared a designated area over the three days of the Land Forces meeting, from 11 September through to the 13th.

In line with section 10D of the Control of Weapons Act 1990 (VIC), the creation of a designated area means that police officers can randomly stop and search anyone present at the site regardless of whether they have a reasonable suspicion about the commission of any crime, and they can also order those wearing face masks to move-on if they’re suspected of trying to conceal their identity.

Students for Palestine featured a post on Instagram with activists singing the praises of what they had achieved on Wednesday morning in terms of disrupting various Land Forces 2024 events around the city, while another activist clip showed police officers demanding that a protest medic remove his face mask as he was assisting another protester who’d been harmed by pepper spray.

And MALS wrote on X midmorning that “the independence of legal and human rights observers at protests must be respected” and that the “OC spraying and physical assault of MALS observers at the Disrupt Land Forces event this morning is unacceptable”.