DISACCORDS

Sydney: Solidarity against repression in Copenhagen

On May 17th police in Copenhagen raided 10 separate addresses, including the autonomous social centre Bumzen, arresting 25 people in all.

They are all facing heavy charges in relation to a riot in inner Copenhagen on March 1st 2017, on the ten-year anniversary of the eviction of Ungdomshuset, a long standing social centre within the far-left scene.

Four of the arrested have been remanded in prison. A number of solidarity noise demos have been called in response, outside the prison in Copenhagen.

On the other side of the world, in Sydney, some anarchists painted a mural in support of the arrested comrades.

No one hostage in the hands of the state.

Malmsbury: Staff members assaulted in Youth Detention Centre riot

15 May – Three staff members have been assaulted after inmates began rioting at the Malmsbury Youth Detention Centre in Victoria.

Emergency services remain at the facility after a group of youths began causing trouble about 2.45pm, police said.

Three staff members were assaulted, and two were treated by paramedics.

One male staff member, aged in his 30s, has been taken to Bendigo Hospital in a serious but stable condition.

Police said damage has been done to the centre.

Investigations are ongoing.

The riot is the latest in a string of violent incidents at Malmsbury this year.

In January, a group of six inmates escaped the facility and stole three cars before being arrested by police.

Pekanbaru: 200 prisoners at large after Indonesian mass jailbreak

Prison buildings seen through a broken window at Sialang Bungkuk prison in Pekanbaru, Riau province.

7 May – Indonesian authorities have said about 200 inmates remain at large two days after a mass escape from an overcrowded prison on Sumatra island.

The breakout at Sialang Bungkuk prison in Pekanbaru on Friday occurred when prisoners were let out of their cells to perform prayers. They broke through a prison door, overwhelming the few guards on duty.

Police said 242 men had been recaptured by Sunday morning, leaving about 200 still at large.

Authorities were initially uncertain how many prisoners had escaped, estimating the numbers at between 100 and 300.

Police said some of the men surrendered or were returned by their families and others were captured by local residents, police and soldiers.

Various officials have said the prisoners were angry about poor conditions and treatment. The prison has a capacity of about 360 but was holding more than 1,870 men, according to a local police spokesman, Guntur Aryo Tejo.

Tejo said four of the escaped inmates were apprehended by police late on Friday about 60 miles from the prison, on a bus heading for West Sumatra province.

Hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed in the hunt for the prisoners.

Jailbreaks are common in Indonesia, where overcrowding has become a significant problem in prisons that are struggling to cope with poor funding and an influx of people arrested under a “war on drugs”.

Friday’s escape was the biggest since July 2013 when about 240 prisoners, escaped after a deadly riot at a prison in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province.

Banksia Hill: Juvenile detainees smash windows and light fires as guards hid in locked rooms

banksia hill

6 May – Riot squads have been forced to storm a Perth juvenile detention centre overnight after detainees smashed windows and sparked fires.

Nine detainees reportedly lit scrub fires inside Banksia Hill Detention Centre while they ran amok outside of their cells about 6pm on Friday.

Prison officers at the Canning Hill detention centre, in Western Australia’s south, were forced to lock themselves in fortified rooms fearing for their lives.

Riot squads and mounted police were called in to get the situation under control on Friday

The riot comes one night after three juvenile detainees were injured at the centre in a separate riot.

Officers stormed the facility on Thursday night after five inmates aged between 15 and 18-years-old broke windows and lit fires.

One of the teenagers reportedly got hold of a nine kilogram gas cylinder, which sparked fears the scrub fire could rage out of control.

The police were forced to use flash bombs and pepper spray during the riot, which took two hours to control.

Nine detainees reportedly lit scrub fires inside Banksia Hill Detention Centre while they ran amok outside of their cells about 6pm on Friday

Three inmates were injured with one suffering an asthma attack, one a cut leg and the third an eye injury caused by glass.

This week’s riots were not the first at the Banksia Hill Detention Centre.

The centre has been home to a string of riots, with four reported in the second half of 2016 alone.

On November 12, 2016 the centre was locked down for three hours after inmates threw bricks at the guards, The West reports.

Inmates also threw bricks at the windows causing $150,000 to $400,000 worth of damage.

On September 1, 2016, four inmates armed themselves with home-made weapons and caused $150,000 worth of damage at the centre.
Special riot police were called in when the riot broke out on Friday night – it took them two hours to control the situation

Special riot police were called in when the riot broke out on Friday night – it took them two hours to control the situation

Union secretary Toni Walkington said guards at the centre were ‘outnumbered’ and put in danger due to the high number of inmates.

‘Things seem to be somewhat unsettled,’ she told Seven News.

The Union said Western Australia needed a second remand facility to cater for the overwhelming numbers.

Western Australia’s new Labor Premier Mark McGowan agreed.

Mr McGowan said on Friday there was a chance the Rangeview Juvenile Remand Centre, which closed in 2012, could be reopened.

‘We need to get to the bottom of what’s going on here. This is happening way too often,’ he said.

Sydney: Anzac heckler charged over offensive yells

25 April 2017 – A man has been charged with offensive behaviour after he yelled out during the one minute’s silence at the Anzac Day dawn service in Sydney’s CBD.

The 32-year-old man interjected during the minute of silence between The Last Post and Reveille at the commemoration service in Martin Place on Tuesday.

“The courageous will never be silent as long as these wars continue. Senseless violence. Stop the wars. Bring peace to the world,” he yelled.

The man was arrested and later charged with behaving in an offensive manner in a public place, a police spokeswoman told journalists.

He was granted conditional bail to appear at Downing Centre Local Court on May 18.

Self-styled “General” Joseph Mekhael, 32, posted a picture of himself giving the thumbs up after being released on conditional bail earlier today.

“I just got out of jail after disrupting the celebration of war that is #anzacday and being assaulted by some of Sydney’s weakest pencil-necked police puppets!” he wrote.

On Monday, a war memorial in Melbourne was defaced with anarchist symbols and anti-war slogan “War is Murder”.

The red paint was scrubbed off the brick monument outside Warrandyte RSL in the city’s north ahead of Tuesday’s commemorations.

Melbourne: Warrandyte war memorial vandalised with anarchist symbols on eve of Anzac Day

25 April 2017 – A war memorial in Warrandyte has been vandalised with the words “war is murder” on the eve of Anzac Day.

The stone memorial was also spray-painted with red anarchist symbols.

The RSL will try to remove the graffiti in time for Tuesday's Anzac Day march.

Warrandyte RSL president Henk Van Der Helm said he was “utterly disgusted” by the vandalism.

He suspected the vandals struck overnight and said the RSL would desperately try to remove the graffiti in time for Tuesday’s Anzac Day march, which will conclude at the stone memorial.

About 600 residents and local MPs are expected to take part in an Anzac Day march in the picturesque suburb in Melbourne’s north-east.

Philipines: Militant Farmers, Peasants Fight to Bury Feudalism With ‘Occupy’ Movement

26 April 2017 – Taking aim at the most powerful oligarchs in the Philippines, rural poor militants are striking at colonial-style feudalism through #OccupyLuisita.

In a bid to reassert their right to rural lands, farm workers and peasants in the Philippines have directly seized and occupied property claimed by one of the archipelago’s largest banks and main oligarch families, the Aquino clan. The move is an escalation of a long campaign to dismantle the unjust system of feudalism and landlord rule inherited from the period of Spanish colonialism.

Gathered in the hundreds and carrying signs with slogans such as, “Land to the Tillers, Not to Their Killers,” members and supporters of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas — a militant mass movement of small farmers, landless peasants, farm workers, rural youth and women — converged on a walled-off section of Hacienda Luisita, a massive sugar plantation in the Tarlac province controlled by the Cojuangco-Aquino political dynasty..As hundreds of police and private security guards looked on, 700 farmers took turns destroying a concrete wall enclosing large tracts of land that were illegally sold to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation. Eventually, a farm tractor was brought in to pull sections of the wall down. While the farmers dispersed that afternoon, they swore to return and undertake the collective cultivation of the land.

For the farmers, the walled-off enclosure represents the broken promise of land reform that the Philippine rural poor have been fighting for decades to win in the face of illegal and semi-legal methods of dispossession and open robbery by ruling elite families.

“The farmers’ united and militant assertion of their rights and interests is an effective strategy to confront repulsively unequal class relations,” the group said. | Photo: Amihan Mabalay

“Kadamay expresses its full support for the #OccupyLuisita movement as it echoes our own call for the government to own up to its sins and finally begin to give to people what is due them,” Kadamay chair Gloria Arellano said, noting that the land remains abandoned “simply because the landlords and the government hold on to their spoils rather than fulfill their duties to the people. Just like the idle housing units, the ruling class would rather see homes and land go unused rather than be owned or made productive by the broad masses of the Filipino people.”

The mass action, given the hashtag #OccupyLuisita by the peasant movement, recalled the recent successful takeover and redistribution of government housing undertaken by allied urban group Kadamay in Bulacan province, called #OccupyBulacan.

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