I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. This week, more than a dozen people were arrested while protesting at a defense conference in Sydney. The demonstrators from Palestine Action Group were protesting the presence of Israeli defense contractors who are exhibiting at the event. The riot squad, along with dogs and mounted police officers, clashed with protesters and used
pepper spray several times on the crowd. Clashes like this one have become routine in Australia with a change in police tactics, as officers increasingly use pepper spray and rubber bullets. Today journalist and author Ariel Bogel on the use of these so called non lethal weapons and how protesting in Australia has become more dangerous. It's Sunday, November nine, and this episode was originally published in October.
So Ariel.
At the moment, we're seeing weekly public protests, thousands of people gathering regularly in pro Palestine marches, also climate protests. We saw anti immigration rallies. As all of this happens, though, we are also regularly hearing reports of people being injured, sometimes quite seriously.
By police.
So can you tell me some of the stories that you've been looking at of this happening.
So, yeah, I've been.
Tracking these same protests that you're talking about and just noticing perhaps an uptick in the appearance of what you call leslie or police tools. So these are things like oc spray, pepper spray in some cases, rubber bullets, things called flashbangs that kind of let off a loud sound like sort of miniature explosives for one of a better way to put it. The inventive branch now also trying to stop this group which is on the Clarendon Street.
Side, from coming down along the era.
Jeez, that's so pepper spray gets in the area. I started wondering what impact this might be having on protesters or others observing them, And one person I spoke to was Alex Zuko. She's a photographer in Melbourne who was pepper sprayed while doing her job as a photojournalist at a protest in Melbourne towards the end of last year.
It caused her to go blind for about an hour. She needed help. There was another.
Photographer too was injured at the same protest. He told me he was hit in the ear with a rubber bullet and required medical attention for that.
And tell me a bit more about these weapons, about the OC spray and the rubber bullets, these things that police seem to be using a protest. What I mean, can they cause long term damage?
So when we use the term OC spray, we were referring to the kind of chemical compound us in the spray that causes that intense burning to the eye. And people told me it's like getting stabbed in the eye. You know, it's really excruciating if it gets into your eyeball. And people probably have heard of pepper spray, but they might have this idea it's like a small cannacy sort of spray it someone's eye kind of miss. These days, the type that police have is it's more like a
sticky foam, if you can imagine it. The issue is too, like how to get it off. A lot of people who go to the protests now have techniques for doing this, but when you get home, you need to have a shower, get out of your hair, get out of your eyebrows, get out of your clothes. But it's not a simple thing to get this stuff off. And then of course there are things like rubber bullets or different forms of projectiles.
We heard from somebody Kylie Martin. She says she was shot in the leg by police with a projectile she believes was a baton round. Just for clarity, a baton round they can be fired from a weapon ressembling a kind of grenade launcher. So in a statement she said that police were just shooting into the crowded protesters, and she claims to have had lasting pain and damage to her leg. And when we look at injuries from these tools globally, we can see really serious instances of injury,
brain damage, and even death. I think the term less legal quote unquote is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly, these tools, especially projectiles, can be lethal depending on how they're used, so they're not something to be used lightly. So police have growing access to these types of tools, but there has been a bit of a lack of public discussion or examination I think of how these tools are being used and even what tools are out there.
I think the average Australian might be quite shocked if they go to a protest and see police with some of these things.
They might never even heard of them.
And so where are these tools developed and how do they make their way to Australian police forces.
Yeah, so when you look at some of the manufacturers of sea spray, flash bangs, rubber bullets, they do often come out of companies that make other more traditionally legal weapons. They often have a side trade in these kind of less legal policing tools. So we got some new South Wales parliamentary documents that show some of the caps can spray launchers used by police are made by Germany's largest arms manufacturers, Ryan Metal. I'm not one hundred percent sure
what brand the Victoria police use at the moment. There have been a range of reports on that topic, but certainly some of the legal observers at some protests in late twenty twenty four, especially outside the Landforces Arms Expo, which sort of faced a quite significant protests over a number of days, observed the use of these flashbank kind of devices as well, and you know.
It's pretty terrifying by all accounts.
You know, I spoke to one police officer in the United States who trains officers on how to use these tools, and to his mind, they are a form of explosive So you really have to make sure officers are trained in their use and really consider the fact that if you throw such a thing into a crowd, it can cause panic, it can cause stampede and cause a range of injuries. And I guess there's just very little accountability or discussion about how police.
Are using these tools.
Coming up the people who are suing police over the US force.
I think that most Australians think.
That we do or we should have the right peaceful protests, that being able to do that is an important and normal part of living in a democracy. But in recent years we have seen various state governments introduced laws that restrict that right to protest. So can you tell me more about that and about how that has in turn affected the way that policing works.
I think Australia's attitude to protest I wouldn't say it has ever been like one hundred percent friendly.
If you go and.
Talk to protesters against the damning of the Franklin River and Tasmania, you know there was continuous face off with police over that.
There have been protests, of course.
Against various conflicts, but reports coming out of places like the Human Rights Law Center have suggested there is a growing crackdown and they are found at least forty nine laws in active by governments have constricted the right to protest over the past twenty years.
If we look here in New.
South Wales, where I am our state may be considered to have led the pack in that way. There's broad discretion now for police to penalize people who disrupt major roads or infrastructure. But there's a lot of discretion there for police to decide what is a major road, what is infrastructure when they can use these laws. Other states
have rolled out a suite of similar legislation. What was suggested to me by a variety of lawyers and advocates is this is creating a permissive environment for use of force by police. We managed to get our hands on some of the statistics. There has been an uptick in use of force in general in New South Wales and also you know hundreds of documented cases of use of OC spray in Victoria.
Again, when you're relying on.
Police to report use of force, it's not always an accurate record, so it's a complicated space to get a really clear picture of.
But it does seem like use of force in general is on the up.
So tell me about the data that you have managed to gather about the increase in use of force against protesters.
This is really part of a trend I know at this point of at least four settled cases in Victoria since twenty twenty one, cases have been brought against Victoria police and they've been settled over the treatment of photographers and journalists, including the use of OC spray.
We also found there.
Were at least seven protesters alleging police violence who have active civil cases in the Victorian County Court. There are a range of allegations there, including a dislocated shoulder, burning painted testicles, caused by police including through the use of OC spray or foam, and what was claimed to be
unnecessarily violent arrests and through FOI. We did get data that showed in New South Wales overall number of incidents where force has been used has risen from almost eighty twenty seventeen eighteen to more than nine thousand in the last financial year, but that data couldn't be broken down by protests scenario.
We could see too that OC spray was used almost.
Nine hundred times in New South Wales in the past financial year, as well as more than two thousand takedowns which is kind of where police might sweep the leg out of somebody to get them to the ground as part of an arrest. And we saw there too in those stats, fifty four percent of those who had experienced a takedown identified themselves as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait islander.
And there is the obvious question then, of what you do if you believe you've been on the other end of that, if you've been assaulted by a police officer at a protest, where do you turn?
What do you do?
Yeah, it's definitely tough. Various states have different mechanisms for making complaints. But I spoke to a law professor, Simon Rice. He won a case against New South Wales police a few years ago for assault, battery and false imprisonment. He was thrown to the ground and arrested while observing a
student protest at Sydney University back in twenty twenty. In his view, there was no really realistic way of complaining about police overstepping the mark general investigate themselves if you can plain directly, a lot of the oversight bodies really take on only kind of systemic instances of police misconduct or corruption. And again, as I mentioned, it's really hard
to get those sheer numbers. You know, after a protest, police often come out and announce how many people were arrested at an event, but there's not really a public record of how many times force was.
Used, what was used, what tools were used, and whether it was appropriate.
So that level of accountability is really difficult to obtain without taking legal action, and so we did speak to a number of protesters who feel their only option to get an outcome was to take it to court. There's actually, in fact a class action currently underway in Victoria about police use of OC spray back in twenty nineteen at the I Mark climate protest, so the outcome there will
be interesting because that will play out in public. We did, of course approach police in Victoria and New South Wales when working on this story. Victoria police told us that it makes no apologies for officers having to use force to separate and safely disperse crowds during protests. They said they don't attend protests with aim of using force, but is always in response to the actions of protesters.
And what effect do you think all of this is, having this use of force protests, both on the individual level on people who you know might go to protests or you know, decide not to and expose as well on the bigger level in terms of how you think the very idea of protesting or going or peaceful protesting is seen in Australia now.
Well, certainly people that have been affected by these tools.
A lot of the people I spoke with, you know, it remained with them. You know, if you get oc sprayed directly in the eyes, that type of pain, you know, you don't forget it quickly. I think it might you know, affect people's willingness.
To share up and protest.
It's part of this overall picture of antagonism in some parts of the media to protest. We do have an implied right political communication in the Australian Constitution which is read as supporting protest for very little positive law.
About that fact. I think some people when they show up to protest might be surprised about the kind of.
Use of force that they're facing, because again it's not well known that police have these kinds of tools in general.
Well, Ariel, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much, Ruby, thanks for listening to this episode of seven AM. We work hard to make seven am as relevant and as interesting as possible. If there's a topic you would like us to explore, we would love you to get in touch with us. You can email us at seven am podcast at Solstice media dot com dot au with feedback.
Ideas or story tips. We'll be back tomorrow.
Catch you, Ben,