EXCLUSIVE: UN expert "shocked" at Hannah Thomas's injuries
NSW Premier's office declines to respond after United Nations special rapporteur warns against "draconian laws"
The NSW government's controversial anti-protest laws are coming under international scrutiny following the violent arrest of former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas.
Mary Lawlor, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, has told Deepcut she was "shocked by the reported injuries sustained by a peaceful protester in Sydney last week during the course of her arrest by New South Wales Police".
"The increasing crackdown on peaceful protest, and the use of excessive force to disperse peaceful protest, is a very worrying trend that is spreading like wildfire through democracies, often fuelled by draconian laws restricting the right to freely and peacefully assemble," Lawlor said.
"Each time such a law is introduced, it's one further step away from international human rights law."
Asked about Lawlor's remarks, the office of the NSW remier, Chris Minns declined to comment.
'I look like this now because of Chris Minns'
The rebuke from Lawlor – a globally renowned human rights advocate who founded Front Line Defenders in 2001 – places further pressure on Minns' government to repeal the laws, which have been widely condemned by domestic civil liberties and human rights groups in the wake of Thomas' hospitalisation with a severe eye injury.
Thomas and four other people were arrested in Belmore on Friday morning after taking part in a demonstration outside SEC Plating, a manufacturing facility that makes components for F-35 fighter jets.
Speaking from her hospital bed in a video published to Instagram on Sunday, Thomas blamed Minns and police minister Yasmin Catley for her injuries.
"I look like this now because of Chris Minns and Yasmin Catley and their draconian anti-protest laws and their attempts to demonise protesters, especially protesters for Palestine," Thomas said. "They’ve emboldened the police to crack down with extreme violence and brutality, and they were warned that those laws would lead to this outcome."
“I’m five foot one. I weigh about 45 kilos. I was engaged in peaceful protest, and my interactions with NSW Police have left me potentially without vision in my right eye, permanently."
Thomas' arrest has made international headlines, particularly in Malaysia, where Thomas' father, barrister Tan Sri Tommy Thomas, served as attorney-general from 2018 to 2020. Major Malaysian news outlets such as the New Straits Times, theSun, Malay Mail and Free Malaysia Today have picked up the story and shared Thomas' hospital video extensively on social media.
'The Minns government has damaged our democracy'
The anti-protest laws, which were passed in February, give police broad powers to restrict protests outside or "near" places of worship. While police have denied that the laws were invoked to break up the Belmore protest, multiple media outlets have reported that an internal NSW Police fact sheet noted that the protest was taking place near a "place of worship", the Teebah Islamic Association Mosque.
Minns rushed the laws through state parliament in the wake of several instances of antisemitic arson, graffiti and vandalism across Sydney. Minns used the most prominent of these incidents – the discovery of a van filled with explosives in the northwestern Sydney suburb of Dural – as justification for the laws, despite revelations that the 'bomb plot' was likely a hoax perpetrated by organised crime outfits. In March, the NSW Legislative Council established an inquiry to investigate whether Minns or other government ministers had misled parliament over the laws. The inquiry is ongoing.
In February, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights warned that the law's restrictions on protests "are incompatible with human rights, cast a disproportionately wide, ill defined and punitive net, and may include provisions that are unconstitutional". In March, Sydney's Palestine Action Group filed a constitutional challenge to the laws in the NSW Supreme Court, arguing that the laws place "an unconstitutional burden on the implied constitutional freedom of political communication".
On Monday, Sydney law firm O'Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors announced it was acting for several people arrested at the protest to defend against any criminal charges and investigate the possibility of filing civil claims against NSW Police.
Peter O'Brien, the principal solicitor engaged on the protesters' behalf, said on Monday that video recordings of the confrontation between police and protesters "demonstrate that there was a fundamental misunderstanding as to the extent of the police officer’s powers to give directions leading up to the arrests which ensued".
"Given that recent changes in the law in relation to protests have attempted to expand police powers to give directions, now subject to constitutional challenge, police may well have felt emboldened to act without proper and lawful acknowledgment of the right to protest," O'Brien said.
Human rights and civil liberties groups have redoubled their criticisms of the anti-protest laws in light of Thomas's violent arrest.
"The Minns Government was warned that vague laws restricting protest near places of worship would be misused to silence people peacefully speaking out," Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer David Mejia-Canales told Deepcut. "The Minns Government's draconian anti-protest laws have set the tone for heavy-handed policing and the repressive treatment of protesters in NSW."
"There has never been any evidence that anti-protest laws prevent racism or keep communities safe. We are now seeing the dangerous consequences of expanded police powers and restricted protest rights."
NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Timothy Roberts concurred, saying on Monday that "the anti-protest laws must be repealed and the Minns Government should be condemned for any part they have played in this by ramping up their hateful rhetoric toward protesters".
“We have all just witnessed a situation where someone has been severely injured for expressing a political opinion. In our democracy we have a right to assemble. We have the right to communicate political ideas. The Minns government has damaged our democracy by undermining these rights."
'No one's above the law'
Minns has responded to criticism by doubling down, saying at a press conference on Monday that people "are entitled to protest, but businesses in NSW are entitled to run their companies as well."
"If we get to the point where it is the law to allow in all circumstances a private firm to be interrupted whenever and wherever a protest wants to take place, you’d appreciate that puts us and it puts police in a terrible position."
Federal home affairs minister Tony Burke also backed police, telling Sky News that “the issue of the injury will be dealt with by the police review but for anyone wanting to have a protest, you know, no one's above the law".
Protesters told Deepcut last Friday that their gathering took place on a public footpath when they were confronted by police, not private land.
The mounting pressure appears to have forced a concession from NSW Police, which abruptly announced an investigation into Thomas's injuries just hours after assistant commissioner Brett McFadden publicly argued that no investigation was necessary.
McFadden initially declined to declare Thomas's injuries a critical incident, defined as an event involving a NSW Police officer that results in the death or serious injury of a person and that requires a police investigation.
On Monday morning, McFadden told 2GB's Ben Fordham that "I've had a preliminary review of the body worn video with a number of commanders and one of our operations experts [and] there's no information at this stage that … indicates any misconduct on behalf of my officers".
By Monday afternoon, however, police had reversed their initial decision, announcing via media release that an investigation would take place after all. Shortly afterward, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, NSW's independent police oversight body, issued its own media release saying it was "monitoring the investigation of the critical incident under Part 8 of the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission Act 2016 to ensure public confidence in the investigation".
NSW Greens MLC Sue Higginson took exception to the police's characterisation of the Belmore action as an "unauthorised protest".
"There is no such thing as an 'authorised' protest. The concept of an ‘unauthorised’ protest as the police have been promoting is just a protest – something that is absolutely legal," Higginson told Deepcut. "There is a process that members of the community can go through in order to protect themselves from being issued fines for blocking traffic or other offences, but a protest does not become ‘unauthorised’ just because that process isn’t used."
In a letter to Minns' office on Monday, Higginson urged the premier to repeal the anti-protest laws, ensure all charges against Thomas and the other protesters are dropped, and "acknowledge your Government’s role in emboldening excessive and violent policing through the expansion of discretionary powers and anti-protest laws".
"The premier hasn’t responded to my letter," Higginson told Deepcut. "I am concerned that the premier either does not understand, or worse, does not care what the law actually says in NSW."
"Chris Minns’ assertions during media appearances over recent days have demonstrated that he does not understand the rights of the community or the powers of police. This is a dangerous combination in a person that wants to be a leader."
While Thomas is still recovering, she has asked that offers of help be directed to Palestinian solidarity and community justice organisations.
"Hannah has requested that anyone who has kindly offered to send flowers or chip into her legal costs consider redirecting their funds to Palestine Australia Relief and Action, the Addi Road Community Centre, or Redfern Legal Centre's statewide police accountability team," NSW Greens parliamentarian Jenny Leong wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.
“What I’ve gone though is obviously nothing compared to what people in Gaza are going through because of Israel," Thomas said in her video.
"Children going through amputations without anaesthetics, people having to choose between starving to death and getting shot lining up for food. That's happening right now, and that’s why we’re protesting and fighting, and that’s why we’ll keep protesting.”