Legal Reflections on A Movement of #Democracy and Concerned-Citizen-Civil-Disobedience building worldwide for #CeasefireinGazaNOW
Earlier today, I was watching the Top U.S. & World Headlines — November 17, 2023 by Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow and it got me thinking… and legally philosophising…
“[at 00:03:47] In California hundreds of protesters shut down all westbound lanes of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge for several hours Thursday morning demanding President Biden call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to US military aid to Israel. Police arrested 81 people the protest came as President Biden met with world leaders in San Francisco at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit or APEC.”
“[at 00:04:14] In Boston Massachusetts, Jewish peace activists led a sit-in protest Thursday that shut down traffic on the Boston University Bridge. In a social media post, the group #IfNotNowBoston apologised to anyone stuck in traffic but added quote:
“We have tried everything else, we have called, we have marched, we have sung, we have prayed we have written letters and visited offices, yet politicians … continue to stonewall and Israel continues to slaughter Innocent Gazans by the thousands”.
It appears a global campaign of peaceful-non-violent-civil-disobedience has emerged and is on the move in order to (re-)invigorate #democracy against stonewalling, derogatory dismissive-ness, and wilful ignorance of the political-vested-interests apparently in charge (albeit marionette-d by the neo-colonial Machiavellian Masters of War) — after hundreds of thousands and millions of peaceful, concerned, and compassionate citizens from countries throughout the world have poured out onto the streets from Brisbane, Perth to Melbourne, Sydney, London (including nearly 1 million on Armistice Day), Baghdad, Dhaka (Bangladesh), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Colombo Sri Lanka, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Boston and (history making in) Texas and on and on, had tried everything else to no avail…
There were also the very powerful images of hundreds and thousands of American Jewish people and allies, with the organisation Jewish Voice for Peace, engaging in #SmallActsofPeacefulResistance and #NonViolent #Peaceful #CivilDisobedience by:
- occupying Grand Central Station in New York City on or about 28 October 2023 chanting “Let Gaza Live!” and wearing t-shirts that state “JEWS SAY CEASE FIRE NOW”;
- occupying the Statue of Liberty on Staten Island on about 7 November 2023;
- occupying the Oakland Federal Building on or about 14 November 2023 to demand a #CeasefireNOW
- crticising President Biden Outside White House on about 4 November 2023 and swarming the White House gates chanting “Genocide Joe!” and demanding for an end to US Funding of the Israel Defence force and demanding #CeasefireinGazaNow;
- Protestors last Monday blocking the entrances at a Boeing manufacturing plant in Missouri that produces weapons used in Israel-Hamas war that the U.S. government has sold to Israel’s military. The Palestine Solidarity Activists said they were Blocking Boeing’s Doors to Stop Delivery of Bombs — “Until Congress blocks the bombs, we will,” said the coalition of activists at the manufacturing plant in Missouri. The peaceful protestors gathered in front of the gates to the facility preventing workers from entering the site for a few hours Monday morning as they called for a cease-fire and criticized the company for supplying weapons to Israel.
- and also thousands of concerned Australian-citizens descending onto Port Botany in Sydney on 12 November 2023 (including via a mass jetski flotilla) to demand the boycott of Israeli Shipping Company, Zim, and accusing it of transporting weapons being used for War.
Last Sunday 12 November 2023, (notwithstanding I was running late and generally overwhelmed with work), I decided to make the extra effort to attend the #PeaceProtestforCeasefireinGazaNOW in Brisbane’s King George Square. The location is just around the corner from my Chambers (where i had work to do but felt that attending the rally should take priority given global circumstances…)
As I walked down Burnett Lane I could hear the distant chanting effervescent and pulsing…like the apprehension of a stadium concert or football match…
The rally was huge and attended by, from my previous experiences, what seemed to be about 4,000 — 5,000 people (although I’m neither sure of that estimate nor do I hold any expertise in crowd-estimation …)
But I can do math (of “maths” as we Aussies say it)
And I engaged a crude (comparative) calculus and reasoned that, if there was 4,000 of us, then there were:
(i) less of us that the reported 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, with 6,900 others injured, including over 2 dozen babies and children some of them the same age as my kids…11 months, 4yo, 13 yo…kids who had names, aspirations, who just wanted to go to school, to play with their friends;
(ii) less of us than the reported 9,500 rockets fired at Israel since Oct. 7, including 3,000 in 1st hours of the 7 October Hamas terrorist massacre/onslaught;
(iii) less of us than the reported 11,078 people, including over 4600 children, now lifeless, and completely innocent, children’s broken bodies (++++buried_under _rubble__or in mass makeshift graves++++++++) needlessly and indiscriminately massacred by the State of Israel/Israel Defence Forces in past weeks…their parents’ hands/minds/hearts (if still alive) desperately grasping for any signs of life…the same age as my kids…kids who had names, aspirations, who just wanted to go to school, to play with their friends…According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH), the Israeli attacks conducted in Gaza between 7 and 28 October 2023, resulted in: (i) The killing of 7,703 Palestinians, including 3,195 children, 1,863 women, and 414 elderly people. (ii) The wounding of 19,743 Palestinians, including 6,168 children and 4,794 women. (iii) 825 attacks against families, resulting in the death of 5,824 Palestinians. (iv) Among those killed are 110 medical personnel, 15 members of civil defense crews, and 24 journalists. (v) The MOH received 1,800 reports of missing people, including 1,000 children, believed to be still under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
(iv) significantly less than the more-than 10,000 bombs dropped by Israel on Gaza city alone since 7th October and which has been estimated (by a Geneva-based rights group, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor) to be twice as powerful as the nuclear bombs bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII; an unprecedented volume of munitions even for the scorched earth realities of Gaza.
(v) significantly less than the reported (approx.) 1.4 million Palestinian civilians who have been forcibly displaced and forcibly transferred and forced to evacuate their homes in Gaza city/Northern Gaza, often referred to as “the world’s largest open-air prison” — and perhaps could accurately described as a modern/neo-Warsaw Ghetto on steroids (which fomented the famous historic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). They sought refuge in what were considered to be safe shelters after hundreds of their homes and properties were directly or indirectly targeted by Israeli warplanes. According to the most recent update from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)) on October 25, 2023, approximately 629,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) are currently sheltering in 150 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip.
Having held the lifeless broken body of my own dead child, Jasper (🙏🏼❤️💔), whose life was tragically taken/stolen from us in highly traumatic circumstances by the cruel hands of fate, I can perhaps imagine more than most — what it is like… perhaps… (?)…but probably not given the extreme circumstances of residents of Gaza and Israeli’s who were victims of the October 7 attacks…
And I have also travelled through and lived in war zones before (Nepal circa 2004), but I don’t profess to know at all neither what it is like to live the abject wholly hellhole horror that:
· was the Hamas terrorist massacre and (completely unjustifiable wholly unlawful) neo-pogrom that occurred on 7 October; nor,
· is the ongoing State-sponsored (US, Australia et al) carpet-bomb-terrorism being committed on Gaza over the past few weeks by the Netanyahu government (obviously utterly amygdalated by the terrorist Hamas horrors unleashed on 7 October in what can only be described as modern terrorist- massacre-pogroms) and supported by the likes of Australia, the USA (“U.S.A! U.S.A! All the way with LBJ!!”…
yes,… all the way….to the Hague(!).
But as a homemade placard stated:
“One Holocaust does not justify another”
And another…
“Bombing Women and Children is NOT self defence”
When I was 17yo, to escape the (admittedly relatively minuscule but nonetheless seemingly significant-for-me) horrors of high school, with meagre savings in my pocket (from being an exploited youth at Hungry Jacks), I took myself to Europe on a one-way ticket to unilaterally attempt to break out of my sheltered upper-middle-class First World bubble — to open my mind 🧠 eyes👁️ heart ❤️ to the world 🌏 | to explore the world and allow it to confront (and change me).
I hitchhiked through France and Italy, worked a host of weird and wonderful jobs, met lots of inspirational people from many walks of life, flipped the bird to my conservative not-consented-to upbringing (by getting dreadlocks and facial piercings — yes the white guy with dreadlocks [cringe]…but it was a profoundly formative and character building step in my journey to substantive adulthood and independence of thought). I also dipped into the antipodean-Earls-Court-cultural cringe bandwagon and headed off to the 🍺Oktoberfest🍺 with the other university grad professionals from Aus 🇦🇺, NZ 🇳🇿, and South Africa 🇿🇦 that I had been living with.
While in Munich, (apart from getting 🍺perilously 😵💫 🥴🤢🤮 pissed 🍻 with all and sundry), I took myself to Dachau Concerntration Camp , by myself, to witness the sombre, sobering, sickening, reality of how heartless and cruel our human cognitive functioning can become — to pay my respects to the millions of innocent Jewish children, women and men, and Roma,children, women and men and People-with-Disability, of this planet who were mercilessly murdered/massacred/genocide-ed on an industrial scale in, what was to become known as, the Holocaust.
· I reeled in horror seeing the photos of the terrified faces of Jewish people being transported on the death trains, the piles upon piles of lifeless and broken bodies discarded as if their humanity had been extracted through ideological warfare (as the hearts and rational minds of their torturers and murders had too);
· I felt nauseous walking inside the crematoriums that were used to exterminate human life on an industrial scale, I stood right next to rows and rows of incinerators used to eviscerate the evidence of genocide — bodies that burnt into cinders and blew over the surrounding suburbs where German citizens completely oblivious went about their business. The cognitive dissonance can be catastrophic. I will never forget a photo I saw (which I cannot locate online) of a face of a blonde middle-aged German woman with complete and horrified shock painted across her face, when was able to enter Dachau after Liberation Day when the war ended. The lady lived nearby Dachau but had been completely oblivious to the genocidal maniacal horrors being unleashed systematically under her very nose and those noses of other nearby residents. Indeed, the lady recalled that there was always a strange smell in the air but she did not pay much attention to it and never would have suspected….
#LestWeForget…
#ICanNeverForget…
Visiting Dachau Concentration Camp over 28 years ago when I was 17yo,had a profound effect on me, changed my life forever and motivated me, indeed made me, dedicate my life to the promotion, protection and the service of international human rights.
The number of people at the Brisbane Rally last Sunday, was a significant turnout for Brisbane and quite the anomaly thereby somewhat subverting the law of diminishing returns vis-a-vis the general tyranny-of-distance-apathy-predisposition of the residents of our quaint, sparsely populated, albeit historically brutal, barbaric and genocidal, penal colony, Australia.
This inversion of the norm was especially stark given the global protest movement demanding #CeasefireinGazaNOW was into its fifth/sixth weeks and generally repeat rallies/street marches in Brisbane have the tendency of dying out into a whisper relatively efficiently. However, the Times [they] are a Changin’ and are unprecedented (apparently)… and last Sunday’s peaceful-non-violent rally/street march in Brisbane, Australia, felt bigger and more determined than those prior…a whisper rising into a powerful song…🎶 🕊️
I was documenting the events on my phone (and with my eyes/brain) as an independent — gonzo-ish-journalist/concerned-Austrialian-citizen/global citizen
The rally filled out a lot (but not all) of King George Square. Attendees witnessed numerous heartbreaking speeches from Palestinian-Australians about murdered, disappeared, missing relatives and loved ones including a powerful poetic speech by a very eloquent 13yo Palestinian-Australian girl …which is incidentally my eldest daughter’s age… thereby really bringing it all back home...
As the surging ocean of concerned-citizenry exited King George Square left onto Adelaide Street, I jumped ‘pon a lonesome bollard to film the full extent of the march (which took about 15 minutes to pass me)
I also wanted to capture the diverse array of everyday Australians from all walks of life and ethnicities pushing prams and holding up their homemade signs on the likes of:
- Weetbix boxes (how very Ozzie!); and,
- Home-delivered-vegie-boxes (how very vegies)
amongst other creative, perceptive, insightful, wise and wonderful and some, much more professionally inscribed, signs.
And then all the small children holding placards and banners (that no child should ever have to hold)…
“Stop Killing Babies”
“Stop the Genocide”
Small children — who should be given the grace, the space, the decency, the dignity, the surety, to not need to know what “genocide” means…
…To not need to know what“murdered babies” means, let alone see such words…
[I reflect on the significant privilege of my own children, 13yo, 4yo, 11 month…who hold the immense privilege of not yet needing to know what those words mean, do not need to know the horrific-cruel-barbarity that the human brain is capable of, they can be comfortably sheltered…for now…(albeit I have been discussing this to a limited extent with my (profoundly reflective) 13yo)…]
…then again, perhaps you cannot be born into this world and be cocooned, shielded, and (entirely) immunised and anaesthetised from its traumas and cruelty (?) (just witness the millions of child victims of the ongoing epidemic of domestic-violence raging throughout Australia and ricocheting like pellets from shotgun shells up, down and inter- generations)]
BUT…
…Because of the terrorism unleashed by Hamas on 7th October;
…Because of the terrorism and genocidal M.A.D-ness (Mutually. Assured. Destruction) unleashed by the State of Israel since (and prior to) October 7th;
++++++ upon their families ++++ their friends ++++ their homes —
these children (at the Brisbane rally) are forced to know…. ++++++(?)++++++
…forced to act…
As award-winning author and fmr Editor-in-Chief of Holistic Parenting Magazine, L.R Knost, reminds us as parents:
“Protecting our children from the cruelty of the world doesn’t mean shielding them from the realities of the world. Tell them the truth. Teach them to care. Give them a voice. Prepare them not to withstand the world, but to change the world…It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”
For, surely we all live in the hope of a future reality that American, poet and playwright, Eve Mirriam, described:
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: “Mother, what was war?”
Alas, I digress…
Following the rally in King George Square, a (sound)waves of different chants washed over the crowd, voices resolute vibrant with vigor, sounding with the burning seeds of Sacred Rage — the kind of selfless indignant self-sacrificial, (small “s”) Selfless-soul-sentient-sentiment that only a parent can know — “I would do anything to protect my children!!!” (including giving one’s own life) — channeled like patient oceans slowly carving through rock over centuries suddenly exploding into peaceful but robustly resolute means.
And thus a typical march around the city ensued (corralled by respectful and friendly Queensland Police Service (QPS) Officers), appropriately led by the Australian-Palestinian-children attendees, about 50 of them — which, in itself, was a resonant, powerful, and soul-stirring sight.
I would estimate the march took about 45 minutes to wind its way along the usual well-trodden and civilly obedient course negotiated with the Queensland Police Service (QPS).
Later in the march, I ran ahead to get photos and footage as the march proceeded up the hill on Charlotte Street towards George Street and during which video I had an interesting exchange with a nice Queensland Police Officer regarding the inconvenience being experienced by non-attendees, who gestured to roll his eyes and stated (with a seemingly lazy attempt at righteous-indignation-equivalence in the circumstances):
“Cars trying to get out of car parks…estimating 30 minute delay… the poor buggers [shoppers/non-attendees/people who accept the status quo] trying to get out [of the car parks]”
I responded (genuinely):
“I really feel for people stuck in their cars for 30 minutes.
But I’m a bit more concerned about innocent children being bombed to death.
#FirstWorldProblems mate
Seriously.
Perspective.”
He [‘…hundred per cent!’] did not disagree with me.
In fact, he agreed, and raised me one/some — the officer vehemently insisted that we should all be concerned about innocent people being murdered “everywhere, not just there [Gaza/Israel].”
To which I responded in “absolutely” agreement and stated “but why not here? [why not now?] You can’t just say ‘too much is happening so I’m not going to do anything!’ That’s a lazy excuse [of righteous and vacuous privilege. i.e. we need more #SmallActsofPeacefulResistance].
Fast forward down the bitumen, up the hill, and around the corner into George Street — the main thoroughfare between Queensland Parliament house (our not-so-brightly shining symbol of ostensible “democracy” and the Federal and State law courts).
something unexpected, very surprising, quite perplexing and even unthinkable (in the context of Brisbane/Queensland/Australia) happened!
Toward the conclusion of the march, the some 5,000 attendees (and their 10,000 plus feet) seemingly spontaneously sat down on Adelaide Street and George Street for approx. 25 minutes. Just sat down, peacefully.
The mass of humanity that peacefully occupied the main arteries of Brisbane’s CBD was constituted by everyday Australians — hundreds of families, prams, and children playing and giggling in the street.
The group was so large that you could not hear the spontaneous speeches at the front.
….Just sat down in the middle of the street and sat there peacefully and did not move.
Indefatigably chanting over and over again
“Ceasefire Now!”
and
“Free! Free! Palestine!”
and
“Albanese/Biden you can’t hide — you’re supporting genocide!”
[as well as “Israel USA How many kids have you killed today?” (I really don’t like this last one as it feels way too gimmicky/flippant for such profound loss of innocent life — plus, it sounds too much like a(nother) somewhat contrived #SocialistAlternative megaphone chant)].
…and over
……………..and over
………………………….and over again.
<<<LOUD>>>>
like 7000 rockets and thousands upon thousands of raging retaliatory air strikes (on homes, on schools, on hospitals, on ambulances, on civilians, on civilians on civilians,, dismembering innocent human flesh, innocent bodies of babies/children, babes (who could just have easily been my own children — could be our own children — ARE our own children - after all — I didn’t get to choose where I was born…we all hold responsibility for the world we are (individually and collectively) creating) ricocheting their rapacious-barbarous-innocent-blood-liability-murderous-wrath through the howling sirens of a distant ghetto under siege…resonating right here under our 10,000 feet…
Multiple-megaphone-led chants weaved and coalesced and washed over me, ~~~~~~~~~
>>>>>>>>> peace-messages carried like carrier-pigeons mouthing olive-branch-offerings to Mainstream Media (MSM) misconceptions and vested interests Dutton-ating yet more division and hatred, poison/acid into the wounds of humanity — when what is ur-gently required is love, empathy, compassion…too soothe the wounds of our world…and begin the work to repair and to say #NoMoreWars
>>>>>>> chants of peace elevating us all via haiku-highways to the heavens in righteous feverish, desperate, prayer to every Godde (God/Goddess) to try to save every single next innocent life about to be unnecessarily wiped off the face of this earth by a multi-million dollar payload (and correlating profit-entry on excel spreadsheet and/or some shareholder dividend and executive bonus),…
…songs swirling in fascinating, fierce, formation like little-fish-vs-Big Fish-forming like a fist-bait-ball-formations courageously confronting a roaring volcano of toxic war-mongering traumatised-rage,
….as I navigated the labyrinth of (living) bodies, limbs, arms sat on the roads walking its length/breadth filming in an attempt to capture an extraordinary unfolding and appreciate the full expanse of the protest.
The crowd of concerned citizens appeared determined/resolute and I am sure the local constabulary were concerned as to what might occur if the 5,000 people refused to stand up again (i.e. until #CeasefireinGaza — Thousands of arrests of everyday Aussies (and their kids) democratically expressing their urgent democratic rights, moral disdain and urgent democratic demands for the Australian Government’s urgent intervention to immediately stop (and investigate / prosecute) the #CrimesAgainstHumanity, #WarCrimes (on all sides of the #Gazaconflict)and even #Genocide unfolding before the world’s very eyes? It seemed unlikely…).
I have never witnessed anything like it in Australia and certainly not Brisbane -and I have attended hundreds of street marches in my life.
After about 25 minutes, the organisers appeared to call it a day, requested everyone come back next weekend with a call out of words to the following effect: “come back next weekend and bring 3–5 of your friends and we will shut down the CBD until the politicians listen [to citizens democratic demands for #CeasefireinGaza]”. It seems highly improbable that this will occur but it was very interesting and unprecedented to witness. The corral of peaceful, civilly disobedient citizens then politely stood up walked off the road and the status quo resumed…
The experiences in California, Boston, and (here-documented in) Brisbane (as well as other recent civil disobedience by Australian-Jewish Citizens in recent weeks, including:
- at the Pine Gap secret US Military base near Alice Springs (supported by First Nations Traditional Owners), as Pine Gap has allegedly been complicit in targeting Gaza and providing vast amounts of intelligence/date to the Israel Defence Forces, and,
- at the offices of the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, mourning the loss of Jewish peace-activists who were murdered/massacred by Hamas on 7 October 2023)
brought to mind certain recent Australian and UK legal authorities that I have cited (in Court) when representing non-violent-peaceful-concerned-citizens who commit intentional and accountable democratic acts of peaceful civil disobedience, namely the following passages from Avery & Ors v Queensland Police Service [2019] QDC 21 citing recent UK Court of Appeal cases R v Roberts [2018] EWCA Crim 2739 and R v Jones (Margaret) [2006] UKHL 16; [2007] 1 AC 136:
[79]. Acknowledging that there is a legitimate right conferred on all Australian citizens to protest enshrined under Australian law, there inevitably needs to be a careful balancing of sentencing considerations including deterrence and denunciation on the one hand, with the right of all citizens to engage in legitimate protest actions on the other, when sentencing offenders for offences committed in the course of protest actions. That balancing exercise was recently considered by the Court of Appeal in England in R v Roberts [2018] EWCA Crim 2739. The appeal involved two applicants who were each sentenced after trial to terms of imprisonment with actual time to serve in respect to an offence of public nuisance. The applicants convictions arose out of their conduct in protesting against the authorisation granted to an oil exploration company to begin fracking at a site in the United Kingdom. The applicants sat on top of the cabs of lorries for between two and half and three and a half days with the result that one carriageway of the road was blocked. Substantial disruption was caused to thousands of people. The applicants appealed their sentences.
[80]. In allowing the appeal and expressing the view that the appellants should at first instance have been sentenced by way of a community order, Lord Burnett of Maldon CJ explained the considerations that should be taken into account when sentencing offenders charged with offences committed in the course of protest activities, observing:
[32]…There is a wide range of offences that may be committed in the course of peaceful protest of differing seriousness; and within the offending very different levels of harm may be suffered by individuals or groups of individuals. They carry various maximum sentences. Some are triable only as summary offences (for example low level criminal damage or wilful obstruction of the highway) and others are indictable. Many protests are directed at government or official bodies and the harm is suffered at what might be described as official level only. Trespassing at military bases or damaging their perimeter fences, are examples. But the essential approach to sentencing by looking at harm and culpability and with the three aims of sentencing in mind (punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation) remain in play. The motivation of an offender can go to increase or diminish culpability. It forms no part of a court’s function to adjudicate, even sub silencio, on the merits of controversial issues but it is well established that committing crimes, at least non-violent crimes, in the course of peaceful protest does not generally impute high levels of culpability.
[33]. It is in this context that the observations of Lord Hoffmann in R v Jones (Margaret) [2006] UKHL 16; [2007] 1 AC 136 (Margaret Jones) have resonance. The case concerned many appellants who were said to have caused damage at military bases for which they were criminally responsible, unless there was legal justification for what they were said to have done. The issue in each appeal concerned the legal justification. The common feature of the appeals was that they raised the question whether the crime of aggression, if established in customary international law, was a crime recognised by or forming part of the domestic criminal law of England and Wales. The appellants’ argument was that they acted as they did because they wished to disrupt the commission of that crime, or what they believed would be the commission of that crime against Iraq, by Her Majesty’s Government or the Government of the United States. They relied upon the defence that they acted reasonably to prevent crime. Those contentions failed, but Lord Hoffmann made important observations about protest and the criminal process in the course of his speech. They bear repetition:
“[89]. My Lords, civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country. People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history. The suffragettes are an example which comes immediately to mind. It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind. But there are conventions which are generally accepted by the law-breakers on one side and the law-enforcers on the other. The protesters behave with a sense of proportion and do not cause excessive damage or inconvenience. And they vouch the sincerity of their beliefs by accepting the penalties imposed by the law. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint and the magistrates impose sentences which take the conscientious motives of the protesters into account. The conditional discharges ordered by the magistrates in the cases which came before them exemplifies their sensitivity to these conventions.
[90]. These appeals and similar cases concerned with controversial activities such as animal experiments, fox hunting, genetically modified crops, nuclear weapons and the like, suggest the emergence of a new phenomenon, namely litigation as the continuation of protest by other means. … The protesters claim that their honestly held opinion of the legality or dangerous character of the activities in question justifies trespass, causing damage to property or the use of force. By this means they invite the court to adjudicate upon the merits of their opinions and provide themselves with a platform from which to address the media on the subject. They seek to cause expense and, if possible, embarrassment to the prosecution by exorbitant demands for disclosure, such as happened in this case.”
….
[34]. Paragraph 89 echoes the understanding that the conscientious motives of protestors will be taken into account when they are sentenced for their offences but that there is in essence a bargain or mutual understanding operating in such cases. A sense of proportion on the part of the offenders in avoiding excessive damage or inconvenience is matched by a relatively benign approach to sentencing. When sentencing an offender, the value of the right to freedom of expression finds its voice in the approach to sentencing.
[35]. The succeeding paragraphs emphasise the limits of an appeal to legal justification in the offending behaviour. But Lord Hoffmann’s dicta do not support the proposition that there is a bright line between custody and non-custody in such cases. It should not be overlooked that public nuisance is a serious offence, the commission of which would suggest that the protestor in question has not kept his side of the bargain adverted to by Lord Hoffmann.”
Given that, in the day and age of contemporaneous capture of evidence by a multiplicity of persons (e.g. via smartphones) and instant upload-able digital media content, there has been a plethora of expert commentary online, since the terrorist-massacre-neo-pogrom by Hamas on 7 October 2023, alleging that both Hamas and Israel have repeatedly and egregiously broken and violated international law, international humanitarian law (namely the four (4) Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols), international criminal law (namely the Rome Statute of the International Court 2002 and other domestic laws that sanction Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Genocide (such as the laws contained in Australia‘s Commonwealth Code Act 1995 Chapter 8 — Offences against humanity and related offences, Division 268 — Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the administration of the justice of the International Criminal Court) especially in countries with universal jurisdiction for same.
Amnesty International states that since the end of WWII over fifteen (15) States (including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, Senegal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) have commenced prosecutions, conducted investigations and completed trials based on universal jurisdiction for various crimes or otherwise arrested people with a view to extraditing the persons to a state seeking to prosecute them.
In relation to the duty of States to enact and enforce legislation in relation to outlawing torture (the right to be free from torture being a peremptory norm and non-derogable right at international law) via the invocation of universal jurisdiction Amnesty international states, inter alia, that:
All states parties to the Convention against Torture and the Inter-American Convention are obliged whenever a person suspected of torture is found in their territory to submit the case to their prosecuting authorities for the purposes of prosecution, or to extradite that person. In addition, it is now widely recognized that states, even those that are not states parties to these treaties, may exercise universal jurisdiction over torture under customary international law.
In this regard, and in the context of the principles of legality and legal justification, it is likely that civil-disobedient-citizens in western liberal democracies, if arrested and criminally charged, for example for occupying a road (as the 81 protestors arrested blockading the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge for several hours on Thursday morning) or occupying/disrupting a politicians office (such as might argue that they were peacefully committing a (relatively and comparably) low level offence in attempting to prevent larger crimes of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (including the crimes of collective punishment, the crime of aggression in customary international law, the use of , and from occurring. As the Citizen’s Handbook website states in summarising that remarkable case:
“Four British women, Andrea Needham, Joanna Wilson, Lotta Kronlid and Angie Zeltner, are members of the peace group, Ploughshares. In January 1996, they broke into the high security hangar owned by British Aerospace in Lancashire. Their purpose was to disarm one of the newly built Hawk jets. These jets were due for delivery to the Indonesian Government who use the Hawk against the villagers of East Timor.
The four women had researched the plane well, learning its control panel layout and serial number. Months were spent monitoring the security and general operations of the British aerospace site at Warton until they were sure that they had located the exact plane destined for Indonesia.
Once they had made a positive identification, Jet ZH 955, they made their last minute preparations. They quit their flats, said their farewells, bought some tools — bolt-cutters, crowbars and small hammers, and made their way to the airfield.
After an agonising period waiting for the right moment, the four women broke into the hangar and set about destroying the war machine. They developed a steady rhythm, once they realised that the security was not coming. Over a period of about an hour the women methodically destroyed the plane’s weapons system with their hammers. As Andrea Needham explains, “I have to admit I thought it might be a kind of religious experience but it felt like work — a job. It was like, here is a weapon that will hurt people, so this is what we have to do to stop it.”
When they finished, they placed banners and streamers over the plane, sang songs of peace and dropped small seeds (of hope) everywhere. As well, they placed a video in the cockpit of John Pilger’s documentary on East Timor [Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1994)] which has footage of eyewitness accounts of the [Hawk] planes in action [bombing innocent civilians].
Eventually [the four women] were arrested and charged. They faced heavy prison sentences. At their trial they argued from a difficult position: that their crime was justified because its intent was to prevent a larger crime, genocide, from occurring. [The defence case was that the women were preventing a greater crime — the use of the jet by the Indonesian military against people in East Timor, who had been engaged in a struggle against cruel occupation and for national independence since 1975. The outcome was one of the most remarkable verdicts in recent legal history: not guilty.] As the John Pilger documentary had been found at the scene of the crime, the women were able to show the video to the jury. On the sixth day of the trial, the jury turned in a majority verdict of not guilty. Their defence had been accepted.
[the Masters of War arms dealers] British Aerospace were stunned. On the steps of the courthouse, crowded with supporters, journalists and photographers, a company representative stepped forward to serve an injunction ordering the women not to trespass on the company’s property. Angie Zeltner took the papers and, grinning broadly, promptly tore them up. Four strong women!”
There are some recent blogs calling for non-violent protest in having a “Critical Role to Play in Protecting Gaza’s Civilians” one which concludes with a quote from linguistic luminary and the most important intellectual alive Noam Chomsky in the 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent Noam Chomsky and the Media as follows:
‘I’ve personally had the privilege, and it is a privilege, of witnessing [the courage of people in the Global South] a few times, in villages in Southeast Asia and Central America, and recently in the occupied West Bank, and it is astonishing to see.
And it’s always amazing — at least to me it’s amazing.
I can’t understand it. It’s also very moving and inspiring. In fact, it’s kind of awe-inspiring.
Now, they rely very crucially on a very slim margin for survival that’s provided by dissidence and turbulence within the imperial societies, and how large that margin is is for us to determine.”
Thus, it remains to be seen what will be determined by the global citizenry…
