Police Thugs Let Rip on Peaceful Antigenocide Protesters on Bidjigal in Police State NSW

New South Wales police officers are well aware when turning up to a clandestine early morning antigenocide demonstrations that activists aren’t going to be swinging.

But at 6 am on Friday 27 June 2025, when peaceful protesters did turn up outside the SEC Plating premise on Bidjigal land in Lakemba to picket its Gaza complicity due to the parts it provides in the F-35 global supply chain, the cops were ready to cut loose on the unarmed civilians.

The footage that’s doing the rounds on social media shows the police officers were up for a brawl, which resulted in multiple assaults, including upon a Greens candidate who officers attacked so brazenly that she’s now in hospital with severe facial injuries that might require facial reconstruction surgery. And at midday on Friday, there continued to be a police presence at the hospital just because.

Further footage emerging from the early morning action saw officers laying into a number of protesters from all sides, when one activist is simply tossed out of the rumble and skids along the footpath, while the video then captures two other officers pushing a woman up against a fence, and when the person filming calls out, “Oh my god, he’s grabbing her by her neck,” well, that was true.

Weapons Out the West reports on Instagram that four pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested and one member of Legal Observers NSW was taken into custody too.

Of course, it should be noted that the uniformed NSW police officers were carrying guns, batons and tasers, so they really weren’t under any threat at all when they decided that nonviolent protesters needed a bit of rough and ready hospitalisation.

The question this raises is, why do NSW police officers consider laying into protesters like this permissible?

And Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi answered this on Blue Sky later that morning, when she wrote, the “Minns government has repeatedly undermined our civil liberties and vilified pro-Palestine, antigenocide protesters”, so these “events are a direct result of that dangerous political approach”.

A law unto themselves

“Police were observed to tackle individuals walking along the footpath to the ground and dragged one person on the concrete, causing serious injuries to her eye and face,” Legal Observers NSW report. “A police officer placed their hands around the neck of one person to drag them backwards, causing them to be unable to breath for about a minute and with serious bruising developing.”

The organisation of the protest had been lowkey, due to the fact that police responses to such direct actions have been rising in thuggish-ness of late. This began in 2022, when the NSW government decided to target climate defenders, who were making traction in spreading their message. However, with pro-Palestinian actions, the authorities have been supressing them from the get-go.

Weapons Out the West explained that the police commenced issuing move on orders to protesters, making “spurious claims of assault following the previous picket”. Then the officers “almost immediately” commenced assaulting demonstrators, “with people being choked, slammed into fences and beaten for questioning the legality of the order”.

The picket set to take place at SEC Plating was not the first such action that has taken place against the Australian company that produces electroplating and provides its products to at least 13 different arms manufacturers. This supplying to weapons companies sees SEC Plating products used to produce the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using to conduct genocide on Palestinians in Gaza.

The Greens candidate who was in the hospital at time of writing is reported to have been “battered by two officers with no apparent cause”. Weapons Out of the West adds that medics were barred from approaching the woman and providing her with first aid, “with officers responding to the severity of her injuries by saying ‘that’s on you’.”

The antiwar group further outlines that a NSW police officer stopped and strip searched a protester, whilst it was freezing cold, and despite the fact that the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 (NSW) (the LEPRA) makes undertaking this invasive action in front of other people completely illegal. And after finding nothing on her, they arrested her anyway.

Legal Observers NSW also questioned the validity of NSW police issuing the move on orders, as per the LEPRA, because they based it upon the idea that as the individuals were near the SEC Plating premises, this could cause “fear and alarm” and further they added that the protest was “unauthorised”.

Creeping authoritarianism

“The actions of the NSW police can only be described as brutal and excessive, there is a significant question about the lawfulness of what they have done,” said NSW Greens MLC Sue Higginson.

“I have spoken with the people in police custody this morning, in my legal capacity, and they cannot believe what they saw happen to the individual who has sustained serious injury as a result of the excessive police force,” the lawyer continued.

The NSW Greens justice spokesperson further suggested that NSW premier Chris Minns needs to answer why, on his watch, NSW police have become empowered to take such brutal actions against nonviolent civilians making a political statement by standing somewhere, and why his government is continuing to vilify and target those taking a stand against Israel’s genociding of the Palestinians.

The NSW Perrottet government implemented extreme antiprotest laws in April 2022, that can see people conducting unauthorised protests that obstruct roads, tunnels, bridges and major facilities sent to prison for up to 2 years. NSW Labor, under Minns’ leadership, desperately supported the Coalition’s antiprotest regime. But these laws don’t capture protesting the SEC Plating premises.

The Minns government has been continuing the crackdown on protests. The premier has been making disparaging comments about weekly demonstrations supporting the Palestinian people who are being killed off by Israel for the sake of land acquisition. And the premier has even tried to shut down these completely lawful protests.

The NSW premier has lately banned protests near places of worship, which effectively prohibits protests right across Gadigal land in Sydney city. These laws were passed under suspect circumstances, which are now the subject of an inquiry that Minns will not appear at, as he avoids questions about whether he knew the crimes the laws were passed in relation to were likely fake.

“When police are deployed to protect weapons companies instead of protecting the right to peaceful protest, we must ask whose interests they are really serving,” said Greens Senator David Shoebridge. “Police are being used here to support a corporate-run global weapons chain against a people-powered global peace movement.”

“This morning is not isolated, we have seen a disturbing pattern of increased politically motivated violence from police against people peacefully protesting genocide,” the federal Greens justice spokesperson underscored.

“Anyone watching knows it’s wrong that police are violently arresting those calling for an end to genocide while simultaneously protecting the companies who profit from the killing.”