Barrister launches “unique” One-Man Parliament House Protest to bring about Gaza Ceasefire
International human rights lawyer and barrister Benedict Coyne today (Monday) “set up office” at Brisbane’s Parliament House to increase pressure on the Albanese Government to demand an immediate ceasefire to the ongoing Gaza conflict.
Mr. Coyne, a former national President of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHRL said he would be “juggling work commitments tending to clients” during his so-called Ceasefire Chambers protest – which is due to begin at 9am in Speaker’s Corner.
(The Queensland Parliamentary website states Speaker’s Corner was “a space dedicated to encouraging Queenslanders to speak and engage in open debate”.)
‘Tm not required to appear in court Monday, so I’ve decided to work from “the home” – aka the House of our democracy: Parliament House,” Mr. Coyne said, adding his protest commemorated International Human Rights Week.
“As an international human rights barrister, it is incumbent upon me to take a stand for peace, freedom, humanity, the rule of law and the international rules-based order – which are under dire threat of losing all credibility and meaning with the current situation in Gaza.
“I’m calling on National Cabinet and the Australian government to demand an immediate ceasefire to the ongoing devastation in Gaza, which has brought global condemnation of Israel for war crimes and genocide of the Palestinians.”
My Coyne said he would also be “performing songs” as part of his #BuskingforLove project, which is raising funds for the “innocent child-victims of war”.
“I’m taking this stand as homage to my mother who as the CEO of a private hospital, staged a one woman protest about the East Timorese genocide outside the Indonesian embassy (with bronchitis and in the pouring rain) in Perth some years ago,” he said.
Mr Coyne – part of a group of legal professionals and academics who last month sent the #AustralianLawyersLetterforCeasefire to the Prime Minister and Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence – said that apart from the immediate ceasefire, his demands included:
- Imposing sanctions on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, senior members of his government and senior commanders in the Israeli Defence Forces (similar to the Australian government’s existing Russia sanctions regime).
- Calling for an immediate International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the conduct of both Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and support any subsequent prosecutions.
- Creating a fast-track visa category for Palestinian refugees trapped in Gaza (similar to the 31,500 places for Afghan nationals through the Humanitarian and Family Visa programs).
- Ensuring the Australian Future Fund immediately divest from controversial Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems, a company associated with the making of cluster-bombs; and,
- Ensuring the Pine Gap defence facility immediately stop sharing intelligence with the IDF.
“Australia has a proud history when it comes to developing International Human Rights Law, with Gallipoli hero Colonel William Hodgson among those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),” Mr Coyne said. “On the commemoration of 75 years of the UDHR, it’s unfathomable the international community has failed to intervene in Gaza.”
Media Contact: Neil Doorley 0412 393 909
Referring to the Hamas/Israel conflict George Brandis (former Attorney General) claims that “the atrocity that precipitated the conflict….has begun to fade from memory” (Some perspective on Gaza, please, December 11).
The precipitating event for Brandis is the one day Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, but that is only secondary to (a) the Nakba or Catastrophe in which 750,000 Palestinians were herded out of their ancestral lands by Zionist terrorists, Irgun, Lehi and Haganah and to (b) the 75 year long brutal occupation of Palestine by apartheid Israel.
Brandis is wrong to assert that Israel has a right to self defence because it is a settler, colonialist entity; it is the occupied people who have that right under international law! Such elementary errors do not bode well for Brandis’ academic standing at ANU!
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Gareth W R Smith
Palestine Liberation Centre
14 Cumbebin Park
Byron Bay
“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
George Orwell, ‘Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’
“The sleep of reason produces monsters.” Goya
The anti-semitism bills passed in the United States are nonsense because they are directed at protesters who are often Jewish people in support of Palestine.
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Also “The bill itself makes no mention of the white nationalism that is the source of the overwhelming majority of antisemitism but focuses exclusively on incidents since October.”
See https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/two-dangerous-bills-in-congress-take-aim-at-palestine-solidarity/
As Pepe Escobar says: the US is trying to “manage a raging, fearful, out-of-control imperialist west staring into the abyss of moral, political, and financial collapse”! See https://karlof1.substack.com/p/more-crooke-and-escobar-on-palestine