“Pine Gap Is a Place of Aggression”, Say Peace Activists in Court Over Blockading the Facility  

A group of peace activists grabbed headlines on 27 November last year, when they blocked the main road into the Pine Gap US-Australia Joint Defence Facility to highlight that the base, situated about 20 kilometres outside of Mparntwe-Alice Springs, has been providing surveillance intel to the state of Israel, which is being used to facilitate the genocide it’s continuing to run in the Gaza Strip.

Fifty-odd activists, comprised of Arrernte Traditional Owners, local health workers and community members maintained the hours-long blockade that commenced at 4:45 am that morning. And the peace activists were successful in disrupting around 100 Pine Gap employees, which basically meant that certain data that could have been used in a deadly manner failed to be gathered and processed.

The Northern Territory police took two of the activists into custody, Carmen Escobar Robinson and Tommy Walker, and they’re set to stand trial in the Alice Spring Local Court on Tuesday, 10 November, International Human Rights Day, and the two-day hearing will continue into Wednesday.

Sizing up targets from afar  

The November demonstration was the second such action the antiwar activists had taken on the road to Pine Gap since the onset of the Gaza genocide, and it was necessitated by a recently published article in Declassified Australia by journalist Peter Cronau describing how the US-Australia facility is being used to collect data on Gaza.

The 3 November 2023 Targeting Palestine report by Cronau revealed that the “Pine Gap US surveillance base… is collecting an enormous range of communications and electronic intelligence from the brutal Gaza-Israel battlefield – and this data is being provided to the Israel Defence Forces.”

A former long-term Pine Gap employee David Rosenberg told the publication that from experience the “Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel”.

The report further elaborates on the two satellites connected to Pine Gap that continuously surveil the Middle East, Europe and Africa, while the data collected is then analysed on behalf of the US National Security Agency (the NSA), and in the current context one can be sure that if anything of interest on Gaza is passed on to Maryland in the US, it will eventually make its way to Tel Aviv.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Pine Gap blockade arrestee Carmen Escobar Robinson and participant Arrernte man Declan Furber Gillick, who’s a member of Victorian Socialists, about the motivations behind the action, the prospects for court, and the imposition of a US base on Country.

Carmen, the activists involved in blocking the road to Pine Gap last year, will be gathered outside Alice Springs Local Court on Tuesday morning to stage the Stand Against the War Crimes of Pine Gap rally, prior to you and another activist facing court on charges relating to the direct action.

Carmen, why did you and other activists risk your liberty last November to block the entrance into Pine Gap? 

Carmen Escobar Robinson: We blockaded the road to intervene and stop the war crimes that were being carried out by that workplace.

We know that Pine Gap collects intelligence and targets data across the Middle East – in Gaza, in Palestine – and then gives that information to the IOF (the Israeli occupying forces).

We were there on Monday, 27 November, to mark the end of a four-day humanitarian ceasefire. We know that the Israeli occupying forces were still snipering people, attacking them with drones, as the ceasefire hadn’t stopped this.

But we were anticipating that Pine Gap workers were going to arrive with a big day on their hands, as they began selecting more targets, getting in more surveillance and aid for the Israeli military, so it could continue its broadscale slaughter.

As far as we were concerned, we’d been watching this occupation and apartheid being carried out for a long time. We knew that it was genocide. Francesa Albanese was calling it genocide and so were other people at the UN.

We were spurred on by an article that Peter Cronau published that quoted a former Pine Gap worker, that confirmed that all eyes would be on Gaza at that time. And by all eyes, I mean all of the Pine Gap satellites.

We knew that if we could interrupt the work at Pine Gap, even just for a moment, we would have stopped their criminal behaviour in aiding and abetting genocide and so, that is what we did.

At the start of the blockade there were about 20 of us protesting, and by the end, there was around 50. We held down the road for about 7 hours and we stopped 100 workers getting in.

We were wanting to bring exposure to Pine Gap, because it is such a covert operation that’s shrouded in secrecy, and we want the Australian public to know they’re involved in genocide.

We want the attorney general to investigate that place for its involvement in genocide.

So, you and Tommy Walker are standing trial over the Pine Gap blockade in the Alice Springs Local Court on Tuesday. What sort of charges are you facing? 

Carmen: We are facing traffic summary offences: loitering, causing a hazard on the road and blocking the use of a public road.

They are sort of triple dipping, in terms of charging people for standing on a road.

I want to stress the fact that the only people who use that road are Pine Gap workers and Traditional Owners of the reserve called Kuyunba. So, we had their permission to be there.

There was no legal or legitimate activity happening on that day, as the only legitimate activity would have been the Traditional Owners accessing their site, because, as far as we were concerned, the activity relating to Pine Gap was criminal activity.

In your press release, you state that expert evidence will be heard during the trial this week, which reveals the role that Pine Gap is playing in the genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.

What will this evidence consist of?

Carmen: We have two expert witnesses providing evidence. One is senior researcher at the Nautilus Institute Richard Tanter. He is going to talk about the flow of information from Australia to Israel that stems from that site.

Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), will too be giving evidence. He will speak about the impact on the ground, so the evidence revealing that genocide is happening in Palestine.

Your road blockades have been successful in raising the issue of Pine Gap supplying surveillance information in order to facilitate Israel’s commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

What sort of broader developments would you like to see in regard to the US spy base that is located in the centre of this continent?

Carmen: We back what the Traditional Owners are saying they want, which is Pine Gap shut down. They want their land back. They want compensation.

As has been echoed many, many times, US militarism isn’t welcome here. It is not welcome in Australia.

It isn’t welcomed on Arrernte Country. These are the direct words of Traditional Owners.

At the very least, I’d like to see investigations into Pine Gap’s complicity in genocide get underway.

I would like to see the ‘attorney general’s fiat’ removed from international criminal offence prosecutions.

I know that Lidia Thorpe is trying to do that through parliamentary processes and that Robbie Thorpe is also trying to do that through court processes.

I don’t see how Australia can sign on to things like the Geneva Convention, only to then have someone like the attorney general having the power to say “nothing to see here” every time an investigation into genocide is required.

We want to be a part of that broader movement to hold this country, the Australian state, it’s military and parliament to account, for their role in genocide not only in Gaza, in the West Bank and now in Syria, but also, in this country, on this continent too.

We know that Pine Gap is a significant military base in terms of upholding and continuing western colonialism here and around the world, and that needs to stop.

We need to be stopping that. No one is supporting the violence that is targeting children and targeting elderly people.

This is not what anyone signed up for – not that anyone signed up for the base being there in the first place.

People really don’t understand that Pine Gap is a place of aggression: it is not a place of defence.

Prior to your action last year and the Cronau article, there were suggestions being made about Pine Gap’s potential to facilitate Israel’s actions in Gaza.

However, many were still shocked to think that could be the case, even though the base has been there for over half a century.

Carmen: That’s because it’s so shrouded in secrecy. Here on the ground, the American military that live in this town don’t really communicate with the rest of the community.

It is that sort of secret. They have their own housing. They have their own social circles.

It is illegal to even take a photo of the place. There is absolutely no scrutiny. There is no transparency. So, how do we monitor or regulate their activities?

They just have a free licence to kill, and I’m sure the Australian public, as they become more aware, will want to see this place shut down.

No one wants that sort of blood on their hands.

Declan, Arrernte Traditional Owners took part in the blockade of the road into the Pine Gap facility in November last year.

This US signals base that sits on Arrernte land is being used to facilitate Israel’s perpetration of a genocide in Gaza.

So, how do your people consider the US and Australian governments conducting these sorts of operations on Arrernte Country?

Declan Furber Gillick: Central Arrernte people, as well as non-Aboriginal people, have always opposed and resisted Pine Gap’s being located on Central Arrernte Country.

It’s important for people to know the objection of the Central Arrernte people, in the sense that there are several men’s and women’s sacred sites at the location that local people don’t have access to, so there is the direct imposition, destruction and quarantining of Aboriginal cultural heritage.

Further to that, there is an objection from Central Arrernte leaders and other Aboriginal leaders in the past and right through to the present, as well as long-term objections from activists, to US and Australian imperialism having a presence on Central Arrernte Country.

Aboriginal people are appalled that effectively death warrants for Palestinian and Lebanese children, men, women and the elderly, are being signed on our homelands.

This is disgraceful. It is something that has always been opposed and will continue to be opposed, and we’re really pleased that people are continuing to stand up against US militarism in Central Australia.

My Aboriginal family, as well as my non-Aboriginal family, in central Australia have a proud history of resisting and speaking out against that.

The Pine Gap United States-Australia Joint Facility has been dealing in this surveillance information on behalf of both countries since about the 1970s.

How have the Arrernte people responded to the imposition of Pine Gap on Country over the past 70-odd years?

Declan: My understanding is that Pine Gap has been there since the 60s. There were marches and women’s camps throughout the 70s and 80s.

There was a big uptick in the 1980s, along with the international antiwar movement. My father, Harold Furber, led marches and participated in that.

So, there’s always been that grassroots opposition.

Today, we have elders, like Felicity Hayes and Amelia Turner, still standing up for and speaking out against the occupation there. If not a consistent ferocious fight, there has always been ongoing opposition.

There has been a long opposition to Pine Gap and ultimately, to US militarism. It is important that people stand up for and fight for all oppressed people and all opposition to militarism on Australian soil at this time.

And lastly, Declan, the Israeli state is carrying out a genocidal assault upon the Palestinians of Gaza and the Pine Gap base established by the settler colonial state of Australia upon Arrernte Country is helping facilitate this.

How does the current situation of the Australian government assisting Israel in this manner reflect on what’s happened and is continuing to happen on this continent?

Declan: While the state of Israel is a settler colonial state that is in the process of continual expansion, the reality is that the settler colonial project that was led by the British Empire on this continent was over 100 years ago or so.

The settler colonial process on this continent was consolidated with the totalising and universal roll out and imposition of the capitalist mode of production.

In my view, Australia is not a settler colonial state, so much as one of the most advanced capitalist states in the world that has its own regional imperialist objectives, as well as sharing the objectives of the imperialist state of the US: the hegemonic state of the era that we live in.

So, what is happening in Palestine is something similar to what was done to Aboriginal people on this continent.

They are doing it with far more highly advanced weaponry, militarisation and technologies, like those that are run out of Pine Gap, in order to consolidate the interests of US imperialism and their own imperialist interests in the region.

They are doing that by clearing the land and literally wiping out a population of Palestinian people, not unlike what happened to Aboriginal people on this continent.

Aboriginal people are continuing to struggle against forms of Indigenous oppression on this continent. This is despite efforts to close the gap and government-led inquiries.

We are still incarcerated at a globally recognised record rate. We have some of the highest suicide rates in the world.

We still have some of the lowest proportionate life expectancies compared with non-Aboriginal people. We continue to have the lowest health and education outcomes in the country.

These are the outcomes of what is still an anti-Indigenous racist nation.

What Aboriginal people see happening to the people in Palestine is the struggle of a people Indigenous to the land. Many Aboriginal people resonate with that struggle and identify with it.

They see a common enemy in the Zionist forces, as they do with the Australian state, which continues to oppress and lock up our people, while negotiating deals with mining companies that sell people’s lands and resources out from underneath them.

There has been a courageous effort by Aboriginal leaders to stand up and make the argument that the links between Aboriginal people from this continent and Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian people. And we have an interest in fighting alongside them.

Tuesday is International Human Rights Day. There is also a big move before the courts by Uncle Robbie Thorpe, who has served charges of advocating genocide against a former Netanyahu advisor.

Lidia continues to stand up and give voice to the joint struggle of Aboriginal people with the Palestinian people, as well as advocating for Aboriginal people.

So, if you look at the Thorpe family or other families leading resistance and fighting political fights for Aboriginal people, we still have a proud history and strong principled oppositional stance to these kinds of atrocities.

I am really proud that elders like Felicity Hayes and Amelia Turner are giving voice to that struggle as well.

Aboriginal people share a struggle with working class people in this country and those interests are for Indigenous people here and in Palestine.

We have seen a year of people making those arguments clear. It has been made clear that Aboriginal people, most of us, do have a case to make for the Palestinian cause as we see our struggle, historically and contemporarily intertwined.