IN the article, “Attack outside Englehardt Street abortion clinic” (The Border Mail, July 3) Pieter Mourik states the way to end violence against members of an authorised public assembly in Englehardt Street is to create an exclusion zone.
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No Mr Mourik, the solution is not to remove people’s legal right to protest as you have advocated (by the way where is your petition with 10,000 signatures you were making so much noise about last year?) but for the Albury police to act swiftly and to take the harassment and violence against the protesters seriously.
This is the most serious, but not the first, case of harassment and violence against the members of the authorised public assembly.
If thuggery is allowed to silence dissenting voices then how long will it be before industrial disputes, rallies in support of marriage equality or protests against the closure of Aboriginal communities have violence and harassment used by their opponents to shut them down?
People have a legal right to peacefully demonstrate in a public street, indeed demonstrators are a police approved public assembly.
Mr Mourik, if you don’t agree with that or that peaceful protest is legal then get the law changed: so far you have failed pathetically.
— DARREN CAMERON,
Albury
