A student-run protest in Sydney today took a violent turn, after protesters against Christopher Pyne and his controversial university deregulation proposal were hit with pepper spray by a police officer, and “pushed to the ground” by riot police, according to Brigitte Garozzo, a Masters student at the University of Sydney, a member of the NSW Education Action Network and education officer of the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association.
We spoke with Brigitte this afternoon after the shocking event unfolded at the Sydney Masonic Centre. Brigitte, along with a handful of others—an estimated five or six—were injured by pepper spray delivered by a police officer who was attempting to ward off the group’s entry into a lecture Christopher Pyne was holding at the time.
Brigitte (blue hair) is shown in photos from the scene below.
Protesting uni students in Sydney say they were pepper sprayed by police @abcnews pic.twitter.com/243ho3mPRd
— Rebecca Barrett (@becjbarr) February 13, 2015
Students trying to enter the Sydney Masonic centre where Christopher Pyne is speaking say they were pepper sprayed pic.twitter.com/Me0ey0C6cc
— Rebecca Barrett (@becjbarr) February 13, 2015
A massive shoutout to Brigitte for taking the time to talk while she was still recovering from her pepper spray injury this afternoon.
How are you feeling after the protest this morning?
I’m feeling quite shaken, I’m seeing a little bit where I got sprayed with the pepper spray, I guess I’m now just determined to find footage and work on an appeal against the police because of what happened.
So you were pepper sprayed by police today?
I got hit directly in my right eye, and it also hit my left eye, and from the time I was hit until about fifty minutes afterwards I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were shut and weeping, it was excruciatingly painful.
Can you describe, in your own words, how the event unfolded this morning?
I got there at about 10:30, people were at the main entrance doing the usual stuff like chanting, they had banners and placards…and about 15-20 minutes later we moved around to the other side entrance which was more visible to the public, which turned out to be better because the public were coming up to us to ask questions and we were talking to them – which was the point of the protest. And then we tried to go inside the building, into the foyer, and then the riot police were there and they started to grab people and push them out of the way. Some people that were in the protest tried to keep pushing through, no one was being violent, people were trying to get through the doors, and people were being thrown to the ground by police.
All the people that had been pushing were on the ground or had been pushed away. And then for some reason, one of the police officers—he wasn’t even a riot cop—gets his pepper spray out, and he’s fumbling around, and then just kind of sprays it around – not even at people who were pushing. It basically hit me directly in the face.
I was just standing there with a placard, I didn’t deliberately engage in pushing because at the last protest I was at the police were really violent and I just didn’t want to have to deal with that again—and then I got pepper-sprayed for nothing.
So you weren’t initially pushed down by the police?
No. I was standing with the group, and I was getting pushed incidentally because the police were pushing people and they were running into me. But I deliberately didn’t engage, I stood there with my placard, and I just wanted to stand my ground. And then I got hit, I was basically incapacitated, I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what was going on. The police tried to drag me out. The pain is so excruciating that you can’t think of anything else, it’s awful.
When did first aid or paramedics arrive on the scene?
[When I got hit] my friends asked the police to call an ambulance, but they didn’t call an ambulance. Our group had to call an ambulance.
How long was that after the confrontation?
It took a long time, about 40 minutes.
What was the atmosphere after it happened?
I wasn’t able to see anything, but you could definitely tell that people were scared, there were people in the group that were angrier, people started to disperse. And instead of people chanting, “free education”, people were saying things like, “shame on the police” and, “why did you do this, why are you hurting us?”. People were shocked. After that [the protest] was kind of over – people were hurt.
What had you expected to happen today? Did you expect any retaliation from the police?
I expected this to follow the same formula that these things usually follow – you know, you go there, you do your chanting, you have your banners, you have speeches. If we saw Pyne we would have chanted, asked questions, I didn’t expect the intense outcome like this, no.
Brigitte at another protest last year.
A lot of media outlets are saying that you guys “stormed” the building – how would you describe it? Were you aiming to get into and disrupt the lecture that was happening?
Ideally we would have liked to have gone in, there was a Q&A going on that was advertised, and it was open to the public. So we were like, “okay, let’s go in and ask him questions, and put him on the spot.” We wanted to grill him about his reforms to higher education. And I guess it was just like entering a building: we just walked in. Then the riot police made a line in front of the door and started pushing people out of the way. We still tried to get through.
If the police weren’t there, how do you think it would have gone down?
We would have just walked in, and gone into the lecture, and we probably would have chanted. We would have wanted to ask him questions about reform to higher education. If the police hadn’t done what they did, I would have expected that we would have interrupted the lecture, we would have asked questions, security would have come and they would have asked us to leave, and we would have been like, “fine, we’ll leave.” We would have left, we would have done our action, and it would have made the media because of the interruption. You don’t want to cause any trouble or have them be violent.
When the riot police do that sort of thing, it’s just ridiculous. And then to use pepper spray on people, that’s just unheard of in this country. That’s what you might expect in America.
It’s totally a rare response to a protest like this. But what would you ask Christopher Pyne if you were let into the lecture today?
There were a mixture of people there [attending the lecture], we wanted to show those people that were there, who might not have know what’s going on, that Christopher Pyne is rolling out deregulation in universities. We’d be there partly to tell the people in the lecture, and partly to get media attention. The smallest thing in the whole action would be to change Christopher Pyne’s mind – because he doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care. He’s going to roll on anyway. It’s all about public opinion and about media. But I guess we would ask him, “Why do you insist on rolling out deregulation even though 76% of the population is very, very, definitely against this?”
How do you think university deregulation bill will go in The Senate? It seems like the bill won’t pass…?
I don’t really trust their word on that. And little concessions can be made – maybe they’ll reject some of [the bill], but not all of it. We want all of it to be rejected. But I do think at the moment we’re probably safe.
Will you and your friends continue to protest issues such as university deregulation? What would you say to students who want to get involved?
I think there were lots of new people at the protest today, and I’ve been doing this for a bit now, and I’ve seen police be pretty violent. But I’m concerned that new people will be concerned about how violent today was – they might think, “I don’t want to go through with this.” But I guess there was also a lot of us who were inspired to keep going after this. But if there are people out there concerned about deregulation, you don’t necessarily have to be on the front line and be sprayed in the face – I’d tell people to get involved with their universities and education groups, and organise with other students, because that’s the only way you can fight this sort of thing. You can’t fight this as an individual, you need to group up. Join an education action group, or even if you’re not at uni, join a political group and go through there. [nb: details on the group’s next protest can be found here.]
Out of interest, what did your placard say?
You’re Spyneless. (hehe).
Lead image by AdhesiveChannel.
