Thousands protest Land Forces military expo in Melbourne

In scenes reminiscent of the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Crown Casino 24 years ago to the day, thousands of anti-war and pro-Palestine protesters descended on the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in Southbank this morning to disrupt the opening day of the Land Forces military expo.

Land Forces describes itself as a “platform for interaction between defence, industry and government ... to meet, do business and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the global land defence markets”. It might more accurately be described as a (bacon-wrapped) turducken of state-sponsored violence—a place where corporate, government and military purveyors of mass terror facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza can pat each other on the back and celebrate another year of profiting from death.

The protest was organised by a coalition of groups led by Students for Palestine and Disrupt Wars. “It’s outrageous that eleven months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people, the Victorian government has welcomed one of the world’s biggest international weapons conferences into the heart of our city, supported by public funds”, Bella Beiraghi, a member of Students for Palestine at the University of Melbourne and co-chair of the rally, told Red Flag.

The protest aimed to cause as much disruption to the opening day of Land Forces as possible. On the other side—determined to ensure everything would run smoothly for the merchants of death assembling for the expo—stood a mass of heavily armed police. As if the 1,000+ Victorian contingent wasn’t enough, additional riot police were seconded from NSW.

As it was 24 years ago on the opening day of the WEF across the road at Crown Casino, so it was again today: a few minor skirmishes between protesters and police were enough to trigger sensationalist media reports and outrage from politicians—the same politicians, notably, who’ve expressed very little, if any, outrage about Israel’s genocide in Gaza—about supposed “protester violence”.

Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned protesters for “throwing things at police”. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan implied that protesters threatened community safety. She also called on state Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri, who missed a session of parliament to attend the protest, to “hand back the keys to her office”. (On the contrary, de Vietri should be commended for attending.)

As was the case at S11, anyone at the protest this morning who saw how things unfolded will tell a very different story to the account given by the media and politicians. Whatever “protester violence” there was paled in comparison to that of the police.

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas yesterday revealed that the Labor government was spending $15 million on policing for Land Forces. It’s possible that there were more police around the Exhibition Centre this morning than protesters. In the days leading up to the protest, they had constructed a barricade of steel fencing around the entire perimeter of the venue. Every gap in the barricade was protected by row upon row of heavily armed police.

Back in the 2000s, police had to make do with batons and horses for brutalising protesters. Of course, as anyone who found themselves in a part of the s11 blockade the police were determined to clear will tell you, they could do more than enough damage just with those instruments at their disposal.

Today, in addition to the same old batons and horses, they’ve got a whole new arsenal of so-called “less-than-lethal” weapons to play with.

Play with them they did. First came the pepper spray—which has been known to cause loss of consciousness and death in extreme cases. Again and again, police sprayed large quantities of it more or less indiscriminately into the crowd. As the protest went on, the tally of those struck down and in the hands of medics steadily rose.

Next came flash-bangs and rubber bullets. Red Flag spoke to Catherine Robertson, a Victorian Socialists local council candidate and rally marshal, who said she was attempting to move people away from the danger when she was struck in the wrist by a rubber bullet. Many others were also hit, including some who were already being treated for the effects of pepper spray.

There is a clear trend of escalating police violence against protesters in Victoria in recent years. However disturbing it is, though, to see people temporarily blinded and coughing up their lungs from pepper spray or wounded by rubber bullets, it’s nothing compared to the horrors the people inside the Land Forces expo are capable of unleashing on the world.

Amid the chaos of this morning’s protest, Red Flag spoke to Aran Mylvaganam from the Tamil Refugee Council. “The Land Forces conference”, Aran said, “is exhibiting modern weapons that are going to be used in wars that are killing tens of thousands of people around the world. At the moment, there are millions of people who have been turned into refugees because of these kinds of weapons”.

“As a young kid”, Aran recounted, “I was living in Sri Lanka. I was learning about the modern weapons the Sri Lankan government was receiving from the West ... People in the Global South get used to one weapon, and they learn to survive and hide from these weapons. Then these industries come up with more advanced weapons that make it harder for people to survive conflicts”.

During the Sri Lankan government’s war on the country’s Tamil minority, Aran says, his school was bombed by Israeli-built Kfir fighter jets. “I lost my brother and many of my other family members and friends, and that’s one of the reasons why I ended up in Australia as a refugee.”

This is the reality that all the outrage about supposed “protester violence” aims to cover up. We live in a world in which it’s “normal” for more than US$2 trillion to be spent annually on waging or preparing for war—and for companies like those represented at Land Forces to profit handsomely from it. We can see the results of all this spending in things like the genocide inflicted on the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and, today, on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Heaven help humanity if we allow things to go on like this much longer. If someone wants to piff a water bottle or even some horse shit at some of the human faces of this capitalist death machine, then, frankly, who could blame them?