Wayne Wharton, Image – www.sbs.com.au

Organisers of protests planned during the G20 Leaders Summit to be held in Brisbane in November have warned that claims by State and Federal police they fear terrorists will try and infiltrate the protests was a set-up designed to give police the right to act with brutal and unlawful force against protesters.

The planned protests are being organised by First Nations leaders to highlight the racists policies of the Abbott Federal Government.

However, the G20 Operational Police Commander, Katarina Carroll has flagged State and Federal police are on high alert, claiming protest groups at the G20 could be “infiltrated” by hardcore extremists.

Musgrave Park leader, Wayne “Coco” Wharton said Brisbane’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Musgrave Park had become a focus of police attention in the lead-up to the G20 with the Federal and Queensland police “using the larger-than-life terrorism threat to apply to Aboriginal people” in an attempt to stifle planned protests.

G20 operational police commander, Assistant Commissioner Katarina Carroll, told Brisbane’s The Courier Mail newspaper police were concerned protest groups could be “infiltrated” by hardcore extremists from interstate or overseas who could “hijack” peaceful agendas.

However, the Police Commander has admitted there was “no evidence” to back up the claim.

Wayne Wharton has rejected the police scrutiny and warned it was simply a tactic police were using to try and prevent Aboriginal people from protesting at the G20.

“The only terrorists our people are afraid of are the police themselves. They’re definitely giving us no credit whatsoever but they’ve already shown their cards,” Mr Wharton said.

“They’re using this terrorist card, they always try to find a lever so they can come back to us and use their own terrorist tactics. We’re well aware of it.”

Mr Wharton said the Musgrave Park organisers were calling on “thousands of people from around Australia to travel to Brisbane to support the Tent Embassy supporters who are planning protests in the week leading up to the G20 and during the three days the G20 is held.

The protests will highlight the treatment of Australia’s First Peoples during a time when the world’s media will be in Brisbane to report on the G20.

Given the fears the organisers have for their own safety and the safety of visitors, Mr Wharton said they were asking for donations to erect a cyclone fence all the way around Musgrave Park, which is located inside the G20 exclusion zone police are planning to establish.

“We’re trying to ask for donations from people around the country so we can put up a safety fence right around the park. We want to keep the police out; we want protection from the police,” Mr Wharton said. “We’re very serious about this safety fence and it’s because of these threats by the police and these opinions and strategies to persecute us.

“They’ve already got their stories, already mapped out why they’re going to kick us in the guts and chase us through the streets and make sure we’re not allowed to meet in groups of more than one and two,” he said.

Highly respected Elder, Sam Watson, will be running a Deaths in Custody workshop on Friday, November 14 as part of a week of activities in the lead-up to the G20 meetings.

“November and December are the big two for increased arrest rates and increased deaths in custody rates,” Mr Watson said.

Mr Watson said the public statements by G20 police commander Carroll about terrorist threats were designed to set up a public discourse to allow the police “to terrorise and brutalise Aboriginal protesters”.

“What the Queensland Police is trying to do is create a mindset that will fully adjust to them being able to come in as paramilitary thugs to bust people and use their related technology in order to terrorise and brutalise Aboriginal protesters,” he said.

But Mr Watson, who remembers the Bjelke-Petersen years, said this was nothing new, it was just ramped up to a whole new “paramilitary” level.

“There is nothing new in this. It is the same old Queensland police bullshit, the same old mindset the cops had back in the 1960s and 1970s under the Joh years.

“The Queensland Police have now become a fully militarised, paramilitary force that has untold power and under the latest sets of laws they can actually go out there and kill people in their own backyards,” he said.

Wayne Wharton said the Musgrave Park mob had already been receiving support, support they are very grateful for.

“We can read the writing on the wall and we’re prepared for it and we do have a special thanks to the Quakers who have put their hand up to come in and act as independent observers at every possible chance,” Mr Wharton said.

“There are also a number of other professional observers in the city who have identified themselves as lawyers and medics.

“We’re used to this; we know what’s going to come, we know they are going to try and scare the shit out of us but we’re not going anywhere,” he said.

“The message that we are putting out to the rest of Australia is we are inviting people here. The only way they hold power in this country is by force.

“This is going to be the only way they hold power and control people here during the G20 is by force,” Mr Wharton said.

– Courtesy of The National Indigenous Times