Ordinary citizens and peaceful protesters who do not understand the depth of special police powers during the G20 summit in Brisbane risk being caught up in mass arrests, the Queensland council for civil liberties (QCCL) has warned.
Police will have unusual powers, including the right to demand identification and search people without cause for suspicion, under special legislation covering most of inner city Brisbane during the event in mid-November.
QCCL president Michael Cope said the council was concerned that while media attention is focused on the spectre of violent protests from anarchist groups, there was little publicity around the police powers.
He said this could lead to a repeat of the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010, where simple non-compliance with those extraordinary powers was a factor contributing to the 1,100 arrests made.
“One of the reasons for the many arrests in Toronto is that people didn’t know the full extent of police powers and as a result many people assuming the police still had their ordinary powers refused to comply,” he said.
“Unless people are made fully aware of the extent of police powers we are concerned that many unnecessary arrests will occur.”
Assistant police commissioner Katarina Carroll was reported in the Courier-Mail as saying officers would “take swift and decisive action, should anyone damage public or private property, or violence is incited within a protest environment”.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Carroll dismissed claims by the QCCL last week that photographs of protesters would be shared with Asio, the department of immigration and possibly foreign intelligence services.
“That’s not in the legislation – we would never do that to our protest groups, nor would we do that to the public in Queensland,” she said.
“We have that information for our purposes and that would not be passed onto other countries – it would not be in our best interests to do that and we would not do that.”
Cope said the QCCL supported arrests of violent protesters but called on police not to curtail peaceful protest through crowd control tactics such as “kettling” – containing a crowd within a limited area.
“Kettling interferes with the rights of peaceful protesters. In Toronto, many people caught in a kettle submitted to arrest in order to get out of the rain,” he said.
Cope said some of the budget spent promoting G20 cultural events should be diverted to a campaign informing the public exactly what powers police would have.
He said some of those events would “be almost impossible to get to” because of the lockdown of key parts of the city.
