APEC Protests

Today's protests in Sydney, to coincide with the APEC forum turned out to be quieter, and more orderly than many expected, and planned for.

There might be a number of reasons for that:

• some individual people and groups, known troublemakers, were warned off. They included Mutiny, a left-wing group that distributed a manual for APEC that detailed how cause trouble; Resistance, a group that acknowledged on its website that other groups feared it would cause violence; and AC/DC, an anarchist political group (not the band)
  
• Police have lessons have been learnt from the Cronulla and Macquarie Fields riots of 2005
• rain, or the threat of rain, kept some people away
• the public holiday in Sydney
• pre-warning by Police that they would tolerate no trouble at all, and had the numbers and equipment to show it
• Protester fears that the protest could be high-jacked by those individuals and groups seeking violence.
  

Reports this afternoon indicated 18 people had been arrested: not many out of 3000 - 5000 estimated protesters. Some protesters, as they seem to do, and some parts of the media have questioned the force used by Police in their zero-tolerance approach. One journalist was pushed back, and fell to the ground, while trying to push into the middle of a Police arrest to get a photo. The journalist seemed to have only minor injuries from the push and fall, but some defended the action as part of "the media just doing its job".

Well, no - it is not the media's job to put themselves into a position that interferes with Police officers' work. The photo could have taken from the 3-5 metres without interfering with Police.

Whether the Police operations, and the special APEC laws, were excessive ought to be discussed as part of a debriefing. If a disaster plan, including preventive measures, means a disaster (riot) didn't happen, that is one measure of its success.