Special Branch fails to intimidate activists

BY CHRIS LATHAM

PERTH — Anti-racists and refugee rights advocates have rebuffed police threats and special branch investigations following a counter-demonstration they staged against a September 16 rally by a group called Citizens Against Illegal Immigration.

The counter-protest, organised by the Refugee Rights Action Network and the Socialist Alliance, attracted 60 people, who chanted "refugees are welcome, racists are not" at the 100-strong anti-immigration rally, which drew 100 people.

Four days after the confrontation, three of the counter-rally's organisers, Roberto Jorquera, Peter Wilkie and Wade MacDonald, were visited by officers of the WA Police's Special Branch.

In an apparent attempt to intimidate the activists, the Special Branch officers presented them with sections 54 of the Police Act, which defines disorderly assembly and conduct, and sections of the crimes act dealing with breaches of the peace, unlawful assembly and riots.

The protest organisers were told that all further actions organised by Socialist Alliance or the Refugee Rights Action Network, and any other organisation or events that they were involved in, were going to have much larger police presence in future, and that all further activities would need police and council approval if they were to go ahead.

But the activists are in a defiant mood, Jorquera telling Green Left Weekly, "police threats ... are clearly a response to the increasing war threat and [a] desire to limit and intimidate those groups [which] will look to build the anti-war movement".

From GLW issue 465