Activists involved in organising October’s peaceful protests during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth had warned that special security laws passed for the event could be used to restrict the right to protest in Western Australia.
Now, a month after CHOGM finished, three Perth-based activists are fighting charges related to CHOGM.
Supporters protested outside Perth Magistrate’s Court on November 22 to support activist Sean Gransch, who faces a year in jail for being in the CHOGM security zone. The protesters called for the charges against Gransch to be dropped.
Gransch is in trouble with police merely for turning up to work. He was employed by CHOGM as a rigger. His job was to assemble and take down a stage for a CHOGM event. In his spare time, Gransch has taken part in several environmental campaigns.
Authorities had placed Gransch on the CHOGM “excluded list”, which the WA government says includes “persons who would pose serious threats to the safety of persons or property (or both) in a CHOGM security area during the CHOGM period”.
When Gransch turned up for work as usual in late October, police arrested him for being in the CHOGM security zone.
Search for Your Rights spokesperson Pearl Lim said on October 25: “Sean Gransch now faces the possibility of a year in jail just for arriving at work. The [Colin] Barnett government is making criminals of hardworking innocent people — and to what end?”
The protest also called for police to drop charges against two other activists, Lewis Todman and Alex Salmon, who were arrested and held overnight by police in October for putting up posters that advertised the protest at CHOGM. Police seized the activist’s mobile phones and have not returned them.
Todman and Salmon also faced court in Fremantle on November 22.
CHOGM Action Network spokesperson Alex Bainbridge told Green Left Weekly: “The concerns that we raised before CHOGM have been borne out amply.
“All the people that I know of that were given exclusion notices [from CHOGM] are basically people who are activists — people concerned with human rights and the environment and want to make the world a better place.
“These are the people who the government was trying to keep out of Perth city.”
The CHOGM laws “are very much laws against the right to protest,” he said.
Bainbridge is also challenging a fine he received in the lead up to CHOGM. Perth City Council officers fined him in September for displaying an A-frame sign that advertised the Chogm Protest as he distributed Green Left Weekly and gave leaflets to passersby.
Bainbridge has elected to contest the fine in court, saying the council’s by-laws undermine the implied right to freedom of political expression in the Australian constitution.
He said: “Most importantly, it’s about free speech. I was standing next to a sign that said ‘go to the CHOGM protest’ and there shouldn’t be any by-laws or laws that prevent people from doing that.”