Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has demanded Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recall parliament to pass anti-Hezbollah laws after the Australian Federal Police undercut Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s tough rhetoric on people who support the terrorist group.
At pro-Palestine rallies over the weekend in Sydney and Melbourne, some attendees flew Hezbollah flags and held up the portrait of the group’s slain leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.
In response, Burke said he would “consider refusing and cancelling visas for anyone who seeks to incite discord in Australia”. He condemned “any indication of support for a terrorist organisation” and said it would draw the “immediate attention of our security agencies.”
A Hezbollah flag is seen during the pro-Palestine rally for Gaza and Lebanon at the State Library of Victoria on Sunday.Credit: AAP
However, the Australian Federal Police said they could not arrest someone just for displaying images associated with an extremist group, even under new laws that started operating in January.
“The mere public display of a prohibited symbol on its own does not meet the threshold of a commonwealth offence,” an AFP spokeswoman said. She said the symbol had to be displayed in a situation where it was spreading hate, intimidating people, inciting crime or targeting people based on their race, nationality or religion.
A small group of protesters who went to the pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne on Sunday afternoon could be heard chanting the words “Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” in Arabic, according to a translation by this masthead.
The chants refer to the killing of Jewish tribes in the Khaybar, an ancient oasis in present-day Saudi Arabia, by forces led by the prophet Muhammad in 628 CE. The slogan has been used at pro-Palestinian protests around the world for a number of years but is seen as anti-Semitic by Jewish groups.
Others in the crowd donned T-shirts with the symbol of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the image of its founder and first supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Current laws make it challenging for Burke to revoke someone’s visa on the grounds of political protest as the majority of his powers are restricted to whether a person is legally in Australia to begin with.
Source Agencies
