A Christian “activist” has been arrested and charged with encouraging the commission of crimes after a large group of approximately 200+ far-right Christian men swarmed 15 peaceful LGBTQIA+ protestors in Sydney on Tuesday night.
Christian Sukkar was arrested after a video emerged on social media of him allegedly telling his followers that if they encountered an LGBTQIA+ counter-protestor, they should “drag them by the fucking head”. Sukkar has not indicated which way he will plead to the charges.
“If you are going down tomorrow to see the protesters there is only one way: that way is to grab them and you drag them by their fucking hair,” he can allegedly be heard saying in the video.
“To the real boys, to the real motherfucking G’s, you go there tomorrow and you fucking shake them up and you drag them by the fucking head… time to rise, time to let them know where we stand.
“Peace be with youse [sic] tomorrow.”
Warning: LGBTQIA+ people may find the following video distressing. I know I sure did.
According to the Community Action for Rainbow Rights group, far-right Christian protestors threw “rocks and bottles” at LGBTQIA+ people and “several people were punched in the face multiple times.”
“We were rushed on by a crowd of about 200 far-right, extremely violent thugs who surrounded us, attempted to break through police lines, punched us in the face, grabbed women’s hair and threw them to the ground and threw glass bottles,” an anonymous LGBTQIA+ protestor told Nine.
“We were in fear for our lives.”
a far-right mob attacked a group of peaceful LGBTQ protestors with bottles, rocks + fists in Sydney this week mere days after an anti-trans Nazi rally in Melbourne… us Queer people have been warning of this for years now pic.twitter.com/09w1KvW4i4
— Hiero Badge (@hierobadge) March 22, 2023
Following this video, Sukkar told the ABC: “I’m very apologetic if my message turned very harmful … if they took my comments as an incitement of hate.”
“This is not what I am about,” he said.
“I was just singing the song, when you watch these rappers … they don’t literally mean go shoot up, go knock people out, it’s just a song.”
Yeah, but is allegedly telling angry Christian men to attack LGBTQI+ protesters who are facing a resurgence of hate right now the same as a harmless rap song?
Sukkar will face court in April.
If you’d like to talk about the issues raised in this story, you can call the QLife LGBTI
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