A 30-year-old schoolteacher says she was injured after a group of men, including neo-Nazis, attacked Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne on Sunday.
Yasmin*, who asked that her real name not be used, told Guardian Australia she had spent a couple of quiet hours at the camp, a standing First Nations protest site just south of the Yarra River, on Sunday afternoon after volatile anti-immigration rallies, led by neo-Nazis, had swept through the city earlier that day.
She had just begun heading home, walking away from the camp, when she “heard a huge commotion”.
“I turned around and I saw what looked like a hundred men in black uniform in formation storming up the hill,” Yasmin said. “I knew that there were lots of women at that camp and lots of vulnerable people and I ran right back.”
The men were carrying poles and sticks, Yasmin said. “I had to run through the crowd to get to my friends.”
She said she fell to the ground and was attacked by one person while others stood around filming the incident.
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Three people were charged on Tuesday night with violent disorder and affray in relation to the alleged attack.
Four people required medical attention and two were taken to hospital with severe head injuries.
“It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever encountered,” Yasmin said.
On Tuesday morning, the mood at Camp Sovereignty was subdued. Under a tarp, police were conducting interviews with witnesses. Smoke from the continuously burning sacred fire drifted across the lawn towards a row of tents, many of which had been erected after a call went out on Monday for people to gather to protect the camp from more attacks.
PJ, a Barkandji/Latji Latji man and camp regular, who was present during the incident on Sunday, said the mood at the camp had been “a little bit rocky, a bit up and down” since.
“We’re still on edge,” PJ said.
The community had rallied around since the news had circulated, he said.
Krautungalung elder Robbie Thorpe, who established the camp on a sacred Aboriginal burial site that was otherwise marked only by a rock and a plaque, said he felt the incident was an escalation.
“Australia is an institution of racism,” Thorpe said. “It’s the institutions of this country that have allowed this to manifest. They’re running around saying stop immigration; they’re immigrants themselves. They’re carrying a British flag around.”
“They can get away with the abuse because it’s a national pastime. It’s in the national interest to deny us our rights. So that gives them a licence to do what they like.”
Camp Sovereignty had been concerned about the risk of far-right violence directed at the camp after Anzac Day, when a “known neo-Nazi” heckled during the dawn service at the nearby Shrine of Remembrance, and had been lobbying for a permanent structure on the site, like the nearby MPavilion, to properly mark it and reduce the risk to campers.
On Monday, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said of the rallies that “not everybody there was associated with neo-Nazis”, but he raised concerns about polarisation, radicalisation and people following “rabbit holes” to extremism.
On Tuesday, the federal Indigenous affairs minister Malarndirri McCarthy described the attacks on the camp as “absolutely reprehensible”, saying she had “never seen this kind of attack in my parliamentary career”.
*Name has been changed
