Reuters
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Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies throughout the nation on Sunday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to unfold hate and had been linked to neo-Nazis.
March for Australia rallies against immigration had been being held in Sydney and different state capitals and regional facilities, in accordance to the group’s web site.
“Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the web site says. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.”
Australia – the place one in two individuals is both born abroad or has a dad or mum born abroad – has been grappling with an increase in right-wing extremism, together with protests by neo-Nazis.
“We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony,” Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, informed Sky News tv, when requested concerning the rally in Sydney, the nation’s most-populous metropolis.
“We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,” Watt stated, asserting they had been “organized and promoted” by neo-Nazi teams.
March for Australia organizers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the neo-Nazi claims.
Some 5,000 to 8,000 individuals, many draped in Australian flags, had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported. It was held close to the course of the Sydney Marathon, the place 35,000 runners pounded the streets on Sunday, ending on the metropolis’s Opera House.
Also close by, a counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a neighborhood activist group, happened.
“Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far-right agenda of March For Australia,” a coalition spokesperson stated in a press release. Organizers stated tons of attended that occasion.
A big March for Australia rally was held in central Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, in accordance to aerial footage from the ABC, which reported that riot officers used pepper spray on demonstrators. Victoria Police didn’t verify the report however stated it might present particulars on the protest in a while Sunday.
Bob Katter, the chief of a small populist get together, was attending a March for Australia rally in Queensland, a celebration spokesperson stated, three days after the veteran lawmaker threatened a reporter for mentioning Katter’s Lebanese heritage at a press convention when the subject of his attendance at a March for Australia was being mentioned.
In Sydney, March for Australia protester Glenn Allchin stated he wished a “slowdown” in immigration.
“It’s about our country bursting at the seams and our government bringing more and more people in,” Allchin informed Reuters. “Our kids struggling to get homes, our hospitals, we have to wait seven hours, our roads, the lack of roads.”
Laws banning the Nazi salute and the show or sale of symbols related to terror teams got here into impact in Australia this 12 months in response to a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and automobiles because the starting of Israel’s battle in Gaza in October 2023.