About 300 hundred people turned up at the Justice for Palestine rally on 30 June 2024 in King George Square. The people present were solid in their support of the theme of the rally: support for Palestinian men. Although the demonstration may appear small now, in years gone by, this would have been a very large demonstration for it has always been difficult to garner support for the Palestinian cause in Brisbane.
People may not be aware but for many months City Hall and police have been giving supporters and organisers of these rallies a hard time. Sunday 30th June was no different. The BCC unit charged with responsibility for these events is called the “Notice of Intention Team, Corporate Security, Assurance Services”. Its manager sent down into the square a young operations manager to take photos of the PA equipment, claiming that it was unsafe. I apologised to her for not taping down two audio leads and pointed out that we’ve been doing this for many years and there had never been any accident or incident relating to safety in King George Square with either Justice for Palestine or with the PA system.
This same person went over to a stall and took a photo of an 18-year old who objected. The operations manager who had not previously identified herself then called in the security guards. It took several attempts by the person on the Justice for Palestine stall to defuse the situation.
Song for Tel al-Zaatar
Later when we were packing up the PA system, two security guards approached me for the third time in the space of two hours and asked me to accompany them into City Hall to talk to the operations manager. This person turned out to be the one taking photos of the stalls and general set-up of the rally.
I explained to them that JFP had every right to conduct its event in King George Square and if they wanted to challenge it they would have to go to the courts. The guards and operations manager said they did not work for city council, that they worked for a firm that was contracted by Brisbane City Council to conduct events in City Hall and in the surrounds.
One in particular made a number of personal remarks and behaved in an immature manner. I was careful not to respond to the personal, sticking only to the questions of safety and the exercise of legitimate democratic rights without discrimination.
Predictably the ‘notice of intention‘ team in Brisbane City Council corporate services has made threats of fines and refusal of permission to use the Square for public assembly.
Brisbane City Council corporate services needs to check their facts, especially given that its boss sent out an untrained staff member from an outsourced events management company to gather evidence against the organisers.
Firstly, the PA system did not have any electrical cables as it is battery operated. I explained to the operations manager on Sunday that only two (2) audio leads were not taped down because I was late setting up owing to my watch being slow.
I hope that BCC will take into account that this is the first time in twenty-one (21) Palestine rallies over the 9 month genocide when we have not had time to tape down audio leads.
Regardless, the leads were not a safety risk because everyone at the rally showed common sense and made sure they did not trip over the leads in broad daylight.
Secondly, there was little wind in KGSq on on 30 June 2024, therefore no need for sandbags however i do agree that this precaution should be taken in future. Stalls are attended at all times, and so if wind does present a problem, it is easily fixed by the stall holders.
I did observe melting ice but it was in metal bowls containing beverages. When there is rain, does council stop people from walking across the square? I don’t think so.
Sour end to Palestinian rally
What strikes me the most about council operatives is the almost total ignorance shown about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza where a genocide is underway. For City Hall to stoop to bureaucratic measures like this showed a casual disregard of people’s main concerns, the plight of Palestinians being bombed by Israel.
This private company that is contracted to manage events at City Hall needs to look closely at the sensitivities of sending an immature staff member to photograph people who are suffering because of what is happening to their families in Gaza. This is a management issue, an industrial issue for the Brisbane City Council and its administrators. It is hard to deal with the level of ignorance shown by representatives of these organisations.
Tel al-Zaatar, the Hill of Thyme
One final note to people who support the Palestinians in their struggle. We all need to be aware that when we are at rallies and marches we are representing the organisations involved, not ourselves as individuals. We should not make the same mistake that the BCC operations manager made. Our struggle is of collective support and solidarity for Palestine, it is not a personal issue.
Of course we are all individuals and there are different personalities involved in struggles like this. For example after the rally I had a conversation with the MC of the rally who was approached by a young man from Gaza who had been living in Leuven, a city in Belgium, for the past nine years. He spoke to Remah, the MC of the rally, in Arabic and I picked up that he had been living in Belgium where my niece lives and teaches philosophy. He was 34 years of age and asked me: “When did you become a supporter of Palestine?“. I replied “1976, because of the massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zaatar.” The young Palestinian man from Gaza seemed incredulous, saying: “that is before we were born!” referring to himself and Remah.
I explained how difficult it was back then to make people aware of the plight of the Palestinian people expelled from their homelands, even when there were major massacres like at Tel al-Zaatar in 1976 and at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982.
To explain, in the film about the Palestinian Liberation organisation there was a scene about the siege of Tel al-Zaatar which was a UNRWA-administered refugee camp in northeastern Beirut. The siege ended ended on August 12, 1976 with the massacre of between 1,500 to 3,000 people. The well-known British actress Vanessa Redgrave brought the film called al Falastini, which documented the massacre to Brisbane and showed it in the Regent theatre in 1977. I was there with a number of others from the Civil Liberties Co-ordinating Committee which was involved in the screening of the film where Vanessa Redgrave spoke about the struggle of the Palestinians. This had a very big effect on me.
That is my own personal story but back to the rally and the intervention of the Brisbane City Council or, more correctly, a firm contracted by the BCC. I am reminded of what happened when the Palestine Fair Trade stall was banned from the West End markets. Individual complainants made the presence of the stall into their own personal issue, when all the PFTA stall was trying to do was to help Palestinian workers sell the products of their labour and get some reward for their work. Yesterday, it was almost as if the BCC operations manager (or more likely her bosses) were trying to make a case for why the JFP and TAQWA stalls should not be in the square. Their actions are discriminatory in just the same way the actions of Brisbane City Council has been discriminatory in lighting up the Story Bridge in Israeli colours and calling for the Palestinian flag artwork to be erased from West End.
The complicity of LNP council in supporting Israel is something that should of concern everyone.
It seems to me that this is an industrial issue when Brisbane City Council contract out events and markets to management firms that do not train their staff and who have little idea of the kinds of rallies that are happening on their doorstep. It is a means of the BCC distancing itself and outsourcing to profit making commercial operations management of pubic spaces like King George Square and Raddacliffe Place.
Ian Curr,
1 July 2024
Reference
This was the film shown by Vanessa Redgrave in the Regent theatre in Brisbane in 1977.