BY SARAH STEPHEN
Strange things happened in Canberra during the US President George Bush's visit. Residents woke on October 23 to radio reports that a Canberra hospital ward had been cleared in anticipation of a presidential emergency. The residents of Yarralumla, where the Lodge and the US embassy are, had their bus stops and main roads closed. A postbox near the US embassy was welded shut.
Despite the intimidating atmosphere, protesters gathered from 9am on Parliament House lawns. They were pushed back 60 metres from the road by barricades, while snipers kept watch from the roof of Parliament House.
A child in an orange jumpsuit chained himself in a cage to highlight the imprisonment of boys as young as 15 at Guantanamo Bay. Two protesters wore rubber masks of Saddam Hussein and George Bush, and got a giggle from the crowd as they shook hands and hugged each other like old friends.
About 4000 people took part in an empowering, peaceful and mostly united protest. Busloads of activists came from Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, arriving throughout the morning and ensuring a high turnover of protesters.
Before Parliament began, Labor MPs Carmen Lawrence and Harry Quick, and Greens Senator Bob Brown came out to speak to protesters.
Stephen Kenny, lawyer for Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, also addressed the rally, explaining that he still doesn't have direct contact with his client. He pointed out that even Nazi Germany in World War II obeyed the Geneva Convention for prisoners.
Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence officer with the Office of National Assessments, brought the crowd to life with his passionate condemnation of the "war on terror". He pointed out that governments were increasingly exaggerating and inventing national security risks for their own political gain.
When Bush's 26-car motorcade approached the front entrance of parliament, 150 metres from the protest, and his entourage emerged from black stretch limousines and SUVs flown all the way from the US, the crowd erupted in a thundering "boo". People chanted "Bush go home" and "End the occupation".
Bush would not have seen the protests, and it was difficult for protesters to see him — about 50 potted plants had been placed near the front entrance to block the view.
In meetings with protest organisers in the week before the rally, the Australian Federal Police said that they would ban any march to the Lodge, where Bush was attending a BBQ with Australia's media and corporate elite. The ACT Network Opposing War meeting on October 21 unanimously agreed to defy the ban as a principle of democratic rights. Just before the march began, the police caved in and offered to let the march go as far as the grass area across the road from the Lodge.
A loud march of 1500 people snaked its way to the Lodge, passing the US embassy, chanting "Howard, Bush, Uncle Sam: Iraq will be your Vietnam". After a few skirmishes at the US embassy, which was ringed by a thin police line, protesters continued to the Lodge, where Bush was forced to go in via the servant's entrance to avoid them.
After half an hour of chanting, police roughly moved protesters off the road, inciting further skirmishes. Five protesters were arrested for breaching the peace. Two protesters were injured and one was taken to hospital with a damaged ankle. A police officer was injured, but not by a protester — a vicious police dog got out of control and sank its teeth into his arm. As one letter writer to the Canberra Times on October 24 pointed out, it was lucky the dog "fastened himself onto one of their fellow officers and not to a child's face".
"We scored a number of victories today", said protest organiser James Vassilopoulos, a member of the Socialist Alliance. "We showed that Bush is opposed in Australia and we reaffirmed our right to march in protest."
From Green Left Weekly, October 29, 2003.
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