@dlowan,
Sorry, Deb, I missed the first time you asked, last night ... was in a bit of an A2K posting frenzy at the time!
Quote:Can I ask again Msolga, did you think the police response to the Indian demonstration excessive?
Of course, I can only rely on media reports. The (Indian student) protesters say that the police used excessive force, but the police say they didn't.:
Quote: .....Earlier, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland defended the use of force to move demonstrators from the protest, which began yesterday at the Flinders and Swanston streets intersection at 2.30pm.
Mr Overland this morning (Monday) told reporters the actions of police in breaking up the protest in Melbourne's CBD were "entirely justified".
"I watched the whole event - I didn't seen any inappropriate use of force," he said.
"Now in that, there were blows because many [of the protesters] had been linked and resistance was going on.
"If someone inadvertently got hit in the mouth, I regret that, but that came about from the actions of the demonstrators after they had been given every opportunity to leave the area."
Mr Overland said the protesters had "made their point" and been given repeated opportunities to disperse before police took action.
He said he had been given a petition by the Indian students with a range of requests, including increased police action and curbing binge-drinking.
The protests appeared to have been "hijacked" by a group of "rabble-rousers", Mr Overland said.
Protesters who were not Indian had joined the demonstration and some people were drunk, he said.
Mr Overland said one officer's hand was bitten during the protest.
"One of my officers was bitten on the hand and suffered an injury as a result of that,'' he said.
"There was some violence, it could have been a lot worse, but overall I think we got out of it quite well.''
One protester was arrested for assault and another charged on summons for throwing objects through windows at Flinders Street station on Sunday, he said.
"I think their demonstration was hijacked - it initially started as a peaceful demonstration,'' Mr Overland said.
"The organisers of that demonstration then left. There were other people who became involved, most of them weren't Indian. They were there for their own reasons, and I think the whole thing just got hijacked and got out of control.''
Police had to shut down the bottle shop at the Young and Jacksons hotel.
Victoria Police would send an officer to India to talk to people considering study in Australia. ....
http://www.theage.com.au/national/overland-defends-use-of-force-to-move-protesters-20090601-bs2r.html?page=-1
According to media reports this dispersion of the students' sit-in occurred at around 5:30 am on Monday morning. I was quite surprised (hearing this via ABC radio on Monday morning as I was getting ready to go to work) I thought the Sunday protest was
IT, that is was all over after that. But it sounds like some Indian students decided on the over-night sit-in to continue the protest at one of the most prominent intersections in the city centre ... the corner of Flinders St & Swanston Street. I doubt it would have mattered
who the protesters were, exactly, that were staging a sit-in at a place like that, the police would have ensured that they were gone before peak hour on Monday. They would see that as their job.
In my opinion, it was a tactical mistake on the part of the Indian student organizers to have continued their extremely successful (Sunday afternoon) protest (they received world-wide coverage of their concerns - blanket coverage in the local media) into the sit-in. Apart from anything else, there were fewer people at the sit-in & it sounds like some troublesome "blow-ins" joined in, making it difficult to keep the protest incident-free. And I think the Indian students lost some local sympathy as a result.
Were the police too heavy-handed in breaking up the sit-in? Hard to know what they were actually dealing with. But as I said earlier there is
no way they were going to allow
any group of protesters to bring the city to a stand-still on a working day. I imagine they would have given the requisite number of warnings, then gone in hard when they met resistance. There were reports of the use of "pressure point" tactics on the part of police to subdue some protesters. Victorian police have been accused of using such (very painful, apparently) tactics on "troublesome" protesters in the past. Basically, it sounds like like they approached this demonstration/sit-in like they have approached other resistant protesters in the fairly recent past. And they
have been accused of over-reacting by protesters in the past. Whether there was provocation from troublesome "blow-ins" or not ... well, it depends on whether you believe the police account of events or not. I would have thought, given the likely (politically extremely sensitive) accusations of "racism" in the situation, that they would have been advised to proceed with great caution.
)