What Rukshan Actually Captured

Cafe Locked Out.

Rukshan

The courage it took to continue streaming, while capturing the moment Vic Police, before a huge worldwide audience, lined up with their new weapons and passionately fired upon our country’s identity, cannot be underestimated.

The police we were facing at The Shrine

The footage is hard to watch, not just because the police—dressed like stormtroopers and all masked up to protect their identities—are shooting fleeing protesters in the back, but because they take aim and fire repeatedly. They were enjoying themselves; getting off on it. It’s there, you just have to look.

One protester summed up the moment perfectly, by crying out during the stream, “This is Fucking Australia?”

Footage from the morning of the shrine. one of these officers shot me and broke my hand.

In the morning, the streets of Melbourne were being patrolled by armoured cars called ‘BearCats’. Victorian Police Officers were hanging off these vehicles, many holding rubber bullet rifles and firing indiscriminately at those they assumed were protesters.

a still from the video i took over my shoulder.

This picture was taken by me and should have been published in a major newspaper with the headline: Is this weapon truly required to police protesting Australians?
But to date, they have all refused to publish it.

I believe this is because the image does not fit the perception most people have of Australia. It’s like a piece that somehow got into the frame, but is actually from a North Korean jigsaw puzzle—a piece we want to hide and forget.

Me on the Shrine with two men i was arrested with. The man closest to the camera, made me the cross and said this will protect you.

But the shooting went deeper.

Not only were Vic Police shooting fleeing protesters, but they were shooting them as they were protesting on the Shrine of Remembrance—a building built to commemorate those who fought and died in the belief they were protecting our freedoms.

And what were these protesters protesting about? Climate change? No. Black Lives Matter? No. That protest had happened only weeks before, with Vic Police officers dropping to their knees, pledging to restrain themselves in the future. No, these protesters were defending what they believed were our enshrined freedoms.

The only reason they were there was because their politicians wouldn’t acknowledge their concerns, mainstream media wouldn’t publish them, and for the first time in our internet history, social media was actively censoring them. So, because they lived in a democracy—where the deputy police commissioner was quoted on video stating, “Protesting isn’t against the law; it’s a fundamental human right”—they were on the streets, airing their grievances.

When confronted by storm troopers in black, the marches became full of powerful religious symbols.

Freedom of choice and freedom of speech, in their eyes, were under attack—an attack sanctioned by the fear that COVID was going to kill them all, despite facts and figures clearly stating that wasn’t the case. It has since turned out that they were right.

But being right wasn’t enough. Perhaps what the majority of us didn’t understand was that this was far more than a protest. This was a clash of identities. A battle between the past and the future.

On the Shrine itself were the ambassadors of an Australia, which many believed we still were. They looked like spectators at the cricket or people coming home from bingo. Except their chants weren’t sport-related; their chants were for freedom. At one point, they sang the national anthem with a defiance I’d never heard before. A beauty, for in their voices you could hear their love for the country they believe they were defending.

And before them, dressed like stormtroopers, were their brothers and sisters—who had initially joined the police to protect and serve the community, but were now enthusiastically taking on a new role.

They were now playing the role of oppressors.

Craig Bachmann

Craig Bachmann, a police officer who left the force to join the protesters because he could see what was happening, was told by a senior officer, and I quote, “Craig, in the future there will be oppressors and the oppressed. Better to be an oppressor.”

The shooting was only part of this oppression. On the steps where they arrested us, there was no tapping on the shoulder asking us to ‘please stand’. Instead, they leapt on us in packs, punching us and smashing our heads into the concrete with their new plastic shields.

The officer who did this to me repeated three times, “Stop making me do this.” There was despair in his voice. But he wasn’t saying this to me. He was pleading with whoever was making him do it. Because I believe, on some level, he knew what he was doing. He was betraying his oath as a police officer and his duty as an Australian, who had grown up under the banner of Lest We Forget. He was betraying himself.

Rukshan’s footage of the day. from Rukshan.

This was not about forgetting our promise to the ghosts we built the Shrine for. This was him using his shield as a weapon to say, ‘Fuck your sacrifice, Granddad. These people won’t do what the government wants them to do, so I’m allowed to hurt them, in order to frighten the rest of the public into doing what they are told, so I will.’

While he was doing this to me and the others who were arrested with me, his colleagues lined up and shot at the other protesters. Then, once they had dispersed them, in their black uniforms and fully armed, they marched up the stone steps and conquered the Shrine like a human black cloud, as the world watched via Rukshan’s livestream.

This Blue Line By Kulture Artist Matt Finlay

Song Available here

There were grandmothers in the crowd, fathers, mothers, young people, and even children—defending not just their own freedom but all that was good about who we thought we were as Australians. Armed with nothing more than their presence, speeches, and as I stated before, the national anthem, they stood against this battalion of officers who embodied the country’s new identity, where integrity would mean compliance and questioning authority would see you labelled a conspiracy theorist, a second-class citizen—a leper. If they could, they would have you fired from your job. Cancelled.

Better to comply.

Us singing the National Anthem before our brothers and sisters dressed as storm troopers and masked and armed.

That’s why this wasn’t a protest; it was a battle. An assault on who we thought we were, by those who were willing to work for those in power, somewhere high above us, who had decided who we, as Australians, were going to become.

And to show their commitment to establishing this new identity, they ordered their officers—these Victorians—to shoot the stubborn ones who still believed that they could cling to the Australia we all thought we were, by simply standing up.

This is what Rukshan captured; Australians whose badges pledged to protect and serve, serving instead a government that ordered them to shoot. And they did shoot. And they enjoyed it. And the echoes of their weapons can still be felt today.

Yet, while they won that battle, they have not won the war. That victory is still up for discussion. Though sadly, even though many Australians are aware that great change is coming, they have lost, for some reason, their larrikin courage to speak.

Michael Gray Griffith.

Images by me.