To NSW, where Premier Chris Minns has confirmed he will attend a vigil held by the Jewish community to mark the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, at the same time as police are seeking to block pro-Palestinian groups from marking the date with an event planned for Sydney’s CBD.
NSW police and members of the Palestine Action Group will meet in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday to argue over whether the group can hold authorised gatherings in the Sydney CBD on Sunday and Monday, October 6 and 7.
The Palestine Action Group says it plans to hold a rally on Sunday – as it has every week since the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East last October – and a candlelight vigil on Monday.
NSW Premier Chris Minns.Credit: Nikki Short
But the NSW Police are seeking to block the two events, a step Minns says he supports – after some protesters in both Sydney and Melbourne last week displayed the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia, at similar protests.
On Thursday Minns said he believed it was “not the right thing to do” for pro-Palestinian activists to meet on Monday, the one-year anniversary of a “devastating terrorist attack on Israel”. But the premier also said he would be attending a vigil organised by the Jewish community.
The decision to seek to ban the pro-Palestinian vigil, the premier said, was due to “genuine police scepticism” about the nature of the event.
I think it’s reasonable in the circumstances for police to be highly sceptical that that would be a candle-light vigil in the middle of the CBD for 200 people on a Monday evening
And that’s not, by the way, out of pure conjecture or a hypothesis. 12 months ago, on the streets of Sydney, a protest or a vigil that was meant to take place in Town Hall ended up all the way down at the Opera House on the front pages of newspapers right around the world.”
We don’t want a repeat of that.
That would be disputed by the organisers and the Palestinian Action Group but I believe a reasonable person would suggest that’s unlikely to happen, that you would have thousands of people.”
Speaking to the media on Thursday Minns reiterated his belief that it was inappropriate for any demonstration to be held on Monday, saying: “Surely one of the other 364 days of the year would be more appropriate”.
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When it was put to the premier that police are also seeking to block Sunday’s demonstration Minns said police “remain committed to the view that the protest on Sunday and Monday risk community conflict on the streets of Sydney”.
Minns noted that other demonstrations planned for outside the CBD have not been opposed by police.
“So the question about Sunday is potential conflict in Sydney’s CBD, the question about a protest on Monday, my view, and I think it’s shared by many view that it shows no sympathy for the fact that this was a terrible terrorist incident in Israel and that [there are] people who are grieving,” he said.