Australia’s PM warns against pro-Palestinian rally as police seek ban

Palestine Action Group condemns bid to ban vigil on October 7 as an ‘attack on fundamental democratic rights’.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called for the cancellation of a pro-Palestinian rally scheduled for the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, as police seek to have the event in Sydney banned.

Albanese said on Wednesday that the planned vigil on October 7 would be “incredibly provocative” and “cause a great deal of distress”.

“Look, in a democracy, we allow for people, indeed, it’s important that people be able to express themselves peacefully. But October 7 will be one year since the largest number of deaths and murders – call it for what it is – of Jewish people, since the Holocaust,” Albanese said in an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster, referring to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel.

“I’ll be attending a vigil to commemorate that terrible day. And anything that looks like it’s a celebration of that, I think, would cause disharmony. We need to promote social cohesion in our multicultural nation.”

Albanese made his comments after police in New South Wales applied to the state’s top court to prohibit the event, billed as a candlelight vigil “mourning 12 months of genocide and terrorism”, as well as another pro-Palestinian rally scheduled for October 6.

NSW Police said in a statement on Tuesday that while it supported the right to peaceful assembly, it was “not satisfied that the protest can proceed safely”.

Organiser Palestine Action Group condemned the bid to ban the rallies as an “attack on fundamental democratic rights”.

“We have a right to demonstrate and we refuse to concede to political attacks aimed at detracting attention from the fact that the masses in this country opposes the Australian government’s complicity in this genocide,” the Sydney-based group said in a Facebook post.

“With Israel now escalating their war against Lebanon, the Palestine Action Group unequivocally opposes this attempt to silence protests calling for the Australian government to take action against Israel’s genocidal war.”

The bid to ban the rallies follows controversy over the display of the flag of Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah during recent pro-Palestinian protests in Melbourne and Sydney.

Australia’s centre-left Labor Party government in January passed legislation banning Nazi motifs and symbols belonging to listed “terrorist organisations”, including Hezbollah and Hamas.

NSW Police on Wednesday said they had arrested a 19-year-old woman for allegedly carrying a Hezbollah flag at a pro-Palestinian march in Sydney on Sunday.