Extinction Rebellion Australia

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So-called climate angels at a protest in Melbourne (March 2019)

The Extinction Rebellion Australia (meaning: Australian rebellion against extinction ), spelled XR Australia for short , is part of the global environmental protection movement Extinction Rebellion , which is organized in small, autonomous groups and networked with one another via the Internet. XR Australia has local chapters in all Australian states and the Australian Capital Territory , except in the Northern Territory . According to XR Australia, there are currently 65 local XR groups in Australia (as of January 2020).

XR Australia plans its actions as a nonviolent civil disobedience and is one of the largest Australian organizations that campaigns against Australian coal policy and for environmental protection.

Extinction Rebellion worldwide

Extinction Rebellion is represented on six continents with 331 local groups worldwide (as of April 2019). The goal of Extinction Rebellion, like XR Australia, is to use nonviolent civil disobedience to tackle the climate crisis. With its measures, XR wants to force governments to act against the mass extinction of animals and plants and the possible extinction of mankind as a result of the climate crisis . The XR movement originated in the UK in 2018 .

History of the Australian environmental movement

The Australian environmental movement developed in 1972 from environmental campaigns in Tasmania against the construction of dams to damming Lake Pedder . The campaigns, however, could not prevent the construction. One of the environmental activists at the time was Bob Brown , who later became director of Australia's first environmental organization, the Wilderness Society , which entered the Tasmanian Parliament in 1982. The Australian Greens developed from these origins .

Other environmental groups in Australia formed in the mid-1970s after the nuclear incidents in nuclear power plants , such as the Movement Against Uranium Mining and Campaign Against Nuclear Energy , which cooperated with other environmental groups such as the Friends of the Earth Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation . An anti-nuclear movement had sprung up in Australia . Although this movement was able to prevent the mining of uranium in individual cases, it ultimately prevented the construction of an Australian nuclear power plant from taking place and the Australian government abandoning the plan for a nuclear repository in June 2014.

School strike in Melbourne (November 30, 2018)

A strong and active climate protection movement has developed in Australia since 2018, when 40,000 and 15,000 Australian students took part in climate protests in March and November 2018.

In September 2019 , 100,000 in Melbourne , 30,000 in Brisbane and 50,000 people (according to the organizers 80,000) in Sydney took part in the Global Climate Strike , the School Strike 4 Climate movement founded on the initiative of Greta Thunberg . The organizers described their mobilization success in 2019 as the largest event since 2003, when 500,000 people took to the streets against involvement in the Iraq war. A total of around 300,000 people across Australia took part, because their actions also affected smaller places.

XR Australia was organized as a movement even before the 2019/2020 bushfires broke out in Australia , mainly with events and protests on the global days of action that Extinction Rebellion centrally schedules worldwide. In the meantime, the environmental movement in Australia has grown in diversity and the sometimes small groups organize demonstrations with other environmental groups such as Uni Student for Climate Justice . This demonstration has recently received massive support. XR Australia not only organizes actions on civil disobedience, but also participates in the demonstrations against the Australian climate policy under the impression of the bush fires in Australia 2019/2020.

protest

Viewpoints of the Australian environmental movement

Poster text: failure? You haven't noticed anything yet! Wait until it is 50 ° C in Brisbane (Rebellion Day in Brisbane ).

The Australian environmental movement, which is very fragmented, strongly supports the XR movement, arguing that it plays an important role in alerting the climate crisis. The large and traditional environmental organizations are particularly critical of XR Australia's forms of protest.

For Kelly O'Shanassy, ​​executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation , the largest and oldest Australian environmental organization, it is perfectly understandable that people are disappointed by government inaction. She fears, however, that the forms of protest could have a negative effect and thus be ineffective.

Dom Rowe, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific , welcomes any group that mobilizes against Australia's environmental policy. While XR Australia will cause inconvenience, XR says what's in store for the population. This is perfectly acceptable to Rowe because the politicians behind the wheel would be asleep.

The campaign director of the Wilderness Society Lyndon Schneiders hopes that the XR campaign will support the lobby for fossil fuels, which will no longer be given the power to cope with further polarization.

Claims from XR Australia

Protest banner in Melbourne (September 2019)

XR Australia has three key requirements:

  • The Australian government has to tell the truth by clarifying the climate and environmental emergency and has to work with other institutions.
  • The Australian government must act immediately to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025.
  • The Australian government must call a citizens' assembly on climate and environmental justice and adhere to the results of the assembly.

XR Australia protests

The Australian-wide XR movement is getting approval with its protests in Australia, only their forms of action are controversial. The non-violent protests include blockades of infrastructure on roads, railways, bridges and docks, demonstrations with street theaters, die-ins, sit-ins and funeral marches. The actions are viewed critically in Australian press organs, as many of their protest actions are non-violent, but violate Australian law, as some of the protesting people do not obey police orders.

Melbourne (April 2019)

Rebellion Extinction organizes worldwide days of action such as Declarations Day or Rebellions Day . XR Australia was also involved in the action days. When Extinction Rebellion called for Declaration Day on March 22, 2019 , XR Australia was involved in Melbourne , Adelaide , Sydney and Brisbane .

On April 15, 2019, supporters of XR occupied the Houses of Parliament of South Australia's Parliament and held a sit-in . After two hours, the protesters were peacefully escorted out of the building by the police.

After three protesters against the coal trains refused to acknowledge their guilt, they were detained for two weeks. This was the longest imprisonment for anyone who had participated in a peaceful demonstration, as far as is known. In some cases, activists blocking coal trains have received fines in excess of $ 60,000 and were sued by rail operator Aurizon for damages of up to $ 375,000.

A coal-laden railroad train on its way to the port of Brisbane was stopped by the XR activists on April 19, 2019, after which they boarded the railroad cars and prevented it from continuing. When one person refused to dismount, he was taken into police custody. On another train, a young woman had chained herself to another dormant railroad car in protest and, after being discovered, was hospitalized for hypothermia. Both people were brought to justice.

Red Rebells dance and culture group in Melbourne (September 2019)

On October 7, 2019, the day of the so-called Spring Rebellion , XR activists blocked streets with sit-ins in Australia, the police arrested dozens of XR activists, in Sydney alone 30 people

In Canberra , 300 people blocked traffic across the Commonwealth Bridge, and in Melbourne, 20 people held a day-long meditation session on the steps of Parliament in Victoria state.

On the same day, in a spectacular action, a young woman stopped a coal train operated by the Indian company Adani Group near Collinsville in Queensland . She had roped down the tracks from a tree. When the train stopped, protesters stormed the tracks and one person chained himself to the train, preventing it from continuing. After the bush fires in Australia in 2019/2020 had reached devastating proportions and the incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison went on vacation to Hawaii despite these bush fires , there was a protest against the Prime Minister in front of his official residence at Kirribilli House . 10 people were arrested at this protest, including the incumbent Senator of the Australian Greens in the New South Wales Senate David Shoebridge and 13-year-old Izzy Raj-Seppings , a member of the local group Extinction Rebellion Sydney , was forcibly arrested by a police officer threatened.

The compulsory police measure was uploaded as a video on Twitter and has so far been clicked 3.2 million times (as of February 2020), making the incident and the 13-year-old known worldwide. Izzy Raj-Seppings spoke at a protest on January 14, 2020 outside the courthouse in the Manly neighborhood of Sydney, which is handling Shoebridge's objection to arrest. In her speech to dozens of demonstrators and the media, the 13-year-old stressed that she had done nothing wrong, she had only exercised her right to participate in a demonstration. She was not arrested, but the police treatment was intended to humiliate her, she said.

Arrest and requirements (bails)

Protest in Melbourne (April 2019)

Despite the non-violent resistance of XR Australia, there have been numerous so-called "arrests" in recent times. For example, on Rebellion Day in August 2019, around 1000 people protested in various actions in Brisbane, 72 of whom were arrested. In Australia, people who do not follow the instructions of the Australian police at demonstrations may be evacuated and detained using force. People in arrest can be imposed conditions (so-called bails ) and detained for eight hours in so-called watch houses or police stations until they are questioned . Whoever does not accept the bails remains in detention until a judge decides. This can take hours or days. People under arrest must hand in personal items such as worn jewelry, belts and glasses. In Victoria the detainees have the right to telephone twice, in Queensland not at all.

Also the former senator including - in October 2019 convicted after a demonstration of XR Australia, where there were numerous arrests Australian Greens Scott Ludlam, parts of the Labor Party of Queensland , the mass arrests of the police by a resolution. The Labor Prime Minister of Queensland Annastacia Palaszczuk , a supporter of Australia's coal policy , announced shortly thereafter that new laws would be introduced that would target climate change protesters and expand police powers for searches. The reason for the tightening was the carrying of dangerous equipment to demonstrations and rioting of individual vehicles. Part of the Labor Party believes that the individual incidents do not require any restriction of civil liberties and suspected that the unsubstantiated claims about dangerous equipment could empower future conservative governments to restrict freedom of speech and assembly and to block trade union strikes.

In the Guardian , certain arrest requirements are described as absurd . For example, 30 protesters and former Senator for the Australian Greens Scott Ludlam were arrested in October 2020. Ludlam was given the condition that he would be at least two kilometers from downtown Sydney and from Extinction Rebellion Australia events. He refused.

The Australian courts are now harshly punishing people who take part in actions and climate protests: An example that exemplifies this: Greg Rolles, a 37-year-old Australian and a member of the Christian Climate Action Australia movement , blocked several hours hanging from a railroad track transports coal to Abbot Point in Queensland , where the world's largest coal shipping port is currently being expanded. The port facility for coal shipping is owned by the Indian Adani Group , an Indian mining company that has been at the center of environmental protests because it wants to open the controversial Carmichael coal mine . To ship the coal, a canal has to be dredged through the Great Barrier Reef . This affects the threatened by rising temperatures UNESCO - World Heritage and the coal that is then used for steel making, the CO would two further increase emissions in the world. Rolling action was found to be criminal in court and fined AUD 7,000 Australian dollars and AUD 2,400 in damages to rail operator Aurizon .

Terrorism charge

On January 10, 2020, it became known in the Australian press that an Australian police unit had put XR Australia on a terrorist list that included Islamist and neo-Nazi organizations. With this entry in a 12-page guide of the Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE) ( Federal Police's counter-terrorism unit in Southeast Australia ), the law forces police officers, government organizations and teachers to report any radicalization.

After the existence of the document was revealed in the press, CTPSE withdrew the document, calling its contents a "wrong judgment" and offering as an excuse that it was "only produced locally". The guide was, however, supraregional to the Australian Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Education, the HM Prison Service (prison administration), the Probation Service and Ofsted (probation service and supervision) and to 20 Australian regional authorities, five police branches and the Counter Terrorism Policing headquators (CTPHQ London) and further distributed to the Department of Health and Welfare in England.

Political reactions

Protest against ScoMo ( Scott Morrison ), the incumbent Prime Minister

The incumbent right-wing conservative Prime Minister and party leader of the Liberal Party of Australia Scott Morrison described the environmental activists in October 2019 as " anarchists " who have set themselves the goal of restricting the freedom of Australians. He warned of a "new generation of radical activists" and called for restrictions on freedom of speech for groups calling for boycotts of service providers in the environmentally intensive extractive industries. The Australian Human Rights Commission , Australian Conservation Foundation and Australian Greens condemned Morrison's view as undemocratic and accused him of trying to silence a social movement calling for Australia to take action against climate change.

Malcolm Turnbull , Prime Minister of the Liberal Party before Scott , stated that for him a rejection of climate change was "not a conservative position" and that the Liberal Party would have been influenced by climate objectors and reactionaries. For him, most of the people who claim to be conservative today are better described as reactionaries or populists.

Tony Abbott , also a former Prime Minister of the Liberal Party, said on the occasion of a visit by the Hungarian Prime Minister Víctor Urbán , who had the aim of an exchange on the migration and asylum policies of the two countries, that Australia should follow Hungary's policy as an example and said: The real extinction rebellion we need is not against our failure to reduce emissions more, but against our failure to father more children.

The former Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Labor Party said in reference to the protests, it was always difficult problematic for politicians to respond to disruptive street protests, but in many cases they were lawful and the decisions of the politicians wrong. She was referring to the opposition to conscription and to Australia's participation in the Vietnam War.

Bob Brown , one of the founders of the Australian Greens , showed solidarity: “It takes a lot of courage to bring a city to a peaceful standstill. Whether common sense can prevail against greed is the biggest question that concerns us all, but Extinction Rebellion is a very powerful common sense asset. "

Web links

Commons : Extinction Rebellion in Australia  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Local Groups . In: XR Australia without data.
  2. ^ Extinction Rebellion's International Rebellion to begin in over 80 cities across at least 33 countries . In: Extinction Rebellion of April 14, 2019
  3. ↑ Our Story . In: Australian Greens without data
  4. ^ Roy McLeod: Resistance to Nuclear Technology: Optimists, Opportunists and Opposition in Australian Nuclear History. In: Martin Bauer (Ed.) Resistance to New Technology. Cambridge University Press 1995, pp. 171-173.
  5. ↑ Lawrence S. Wittner: Nuclear Disarmament Activism in Asia and the Pacific, 1971-1996 . In: The Aseatic-Pacific Journal of June 15, 2009
  6. ↑ Aborigines prevent nuclear waste dumps . In: The daily newspaper from June 19, 2014.
  7. ↑ Natassia Chrysanthos: We will never back down ': 80,000 strike in Sydney over climate change . In: The Age of September 20, 2019
  8. ^ Jenny Noyes, Natassia Chrysanthos: That's a wrap for Australia's climate strikes . In: The Age of September 20, 2020
  9. ↑ a b Graham Readfearn: Extinction Rebellion risks polarizing Australian public on climate, veteran activist says , In: The Guardian, October 10, 2019
  10. ↑ Janek Drevikovsky, Matt Bungard: Sydney CBD climate protest attracts over 30,000 people . In: The Age of January 10, 2020
  11. ↑ Demands . In: XR Australia without data.
  12. ↑ Declarations Day: XR Australia's Demands . In: XR Australia on March 22, 2019
  13. ↑ Climate change protesters forcibly removed from Parliament House In: The Advertiser of April 15, 2019
  14. ↑ Extinction Rebellion protesters to be held in jail for at least two weeks after being denied bail . In: The Guardian of December 4, 2019
  15. ^ Extinction Rebellion activists stop coal train in Brisbane In: The Guardian, April 20, 2019.
  16. ↑ Emma Brancatisano: Climate activists staged a sit-in on a busy Sydney intersection and dozens were arrested as protests kicked off across the country In: 10Daily, October 7, 2019
  17. ^ Carolyn Webb: A duty to disobey ': who are Extinction Rebellion? In: Sydney Morning Herald, October 8, 2019.
  18. ↑ a b felt like a criminal ' Australia's Greta Thunberg slams police who' humiliated her 'at a climate change rally as she arrives at court to support Greens MP charged with disobeying police . In the Daily Mail of January 16, 2020
  19. ↑ Extinction Rebellion campaigners protest outside Australia's London embassy demanding Prime Minister Scott Morrison is fired for his handling of the bushfire crisis . In: Daily Mail of January 10, 2020
  20. ↑ How a 13-year-old became the face of the protest on Spiegel Online on December 21, 2019.
  21. ↑ Ben Smee: Extinction Rebellion: hitting a nerve at Australia's climate flashpoint . In: The Guardian of August 10, 2019
  22. ↑ Jackie Dent: Being arrested . In Legalaid without information.
  23. ↑ It doesn't have to be scary: veteran protesters on Extinction Rebellion and getting arrested . In The Guardian on October 15, 2019
  24. ↑ Extinction Rebellion: Labor members say 'chilling' mass arrests have echoes of Bjelke-Petersen era . In: The Guardian of October 10, 2019
  25. ↑ Naaman Zhou: Absurd 'bail conditions prevent Extinction Rebellion protesters' going near' other members . In: The Guardian of October 9, 2019
  26. ↑ Christoph Hein: Australia plans megahorts on the Great Barrier Reef , on FAZ from March 4, 2014
  27. ↑ Kerry Smith: Climate change not an emergency: Queensland magistrate . In: Greenleft of May 30, 2019
  28. ^ Vikram Dodd, Jamie Grierson: Terrorism police list Extinction Rebellion as extremist ideology . In: The Guardian of January 10, 2020
  29. ^ Vikram Dodd, Jamie Grierson: Terror police list that included Extinction Rebellion was shared across government . In: The Guardian of January 27, 2010
  30. ↑ Paul Karp: Scott Morrison threatens crackdown on protesters who would deny liberty In: The Guardian, November 1, 2019, accessed December 31, 2019.
  31. ↑ Bitter ousted prime minister Malcolm Turnbull blames climate change deniers and an 'incapable' Liberal Party for skyrocketing power prices , on Daily Mail of October 7, 2019
  32. ↑ Matthwe Doran: Tony Abbott warns West faces 'extinction' crisis, praises Hungary's far-right leader Viktor Orban . In: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, September 19, 2019
  33. ^ Latika Bourke: Julia Gillard praises and criticises Extinction Rebellion protesters . In: Sydney Morning Herald of October 17, 2019
  34. ↑ Jack Nichols: Rising force: How Extinction Rebellion hopes to make a difference . In: Sydney Morning Herald of August 29, 2019