Byron Bay peace rally and march

BY CLAYTON MCDONALD

BYRON BAY — "I have seen the bomb. I have felt the blast. I have heard the silence and seen the devastation afterwards", Bali bombing survivor Hanabeth Luke told the 3000 protesters who had marched to the Byron Bay beach park on February 15. She explained that the blast had taken the life of her partner, but she had survived. "Australians should understand from the Bali bombing that violence and war are not the answer", she said.

The protest was part of an international weekend of action against war in Iraq.

Journalist Mungo McCallum told the rally that Osama Bin Laden would be pleased with a messy US war on Iraq as it would "kill two birds with one stone": Muslim public opinion would turn against the US, while the removal of the secular Saddam Hussein regime would open the way for a new radical Islamist regime in Iraq that really would supply weapons to terrorists.

McCullum expressed the hope that Australians would have the "human decency, moral courage and common sense to keep out of a war on Iraq", otherwise they would need "more than fridge magnets and rhetoric to stop the consequences".

Local MLA Peter Breen said that, if Prime Minister John Howard embarks on a war with no regard to the "suffering and mayhem" that it would cause, he was prepared to make a case against him in the international court. Breen said that there should be "regime change at home".

On the same day, 3000 marched in Bellingen, opposing a war for Iraqi oil.

From Green Left Weekly, February 19, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 526