Violence erupted at Melbourne and Sydney in Australia after thousands of anti-lockdown protesters took to the streets to protest against restrictions imposed by the government in the wake of COVID-19.
On the day when the state recorded 535 new cases and 1 death due to COVID-19, around 1,000 protesters defied the stay-in-home orders and gathered in the north-eastern suburbs of Richmond and Hawthorn to mark their opposition to the new set of restrictions enforced to tame the outbreak.
However, protests quickly turned violent as clashes broke out between demonstrators and law enforcement officials. Victoria Police on Saturday arrested 235 people and three officers were admitted to hospital following the violent skirmishes between the police and the anti-lockdown protesters in Melbourne’s inner city.
Videos of the protests show protesters indulging in riotous behaviour, assaulting police officers and throwing objects, including plastic bottles, cones, at the officials deployed to control the demonstrations.
Protesters break through the police line, an officer gets assaulted and trampled by demonstrators, people are screaming and covered in capsicum spray @theage pic.twitter.com/qXX9lIAZRJ
— David Estcourt (@davidestcourt) September 18, 2021
The protesters also ran over barricades mounted by the police to confine the demonstrations to Burnley Street in Richmond and escaped to Bridge Road. Footage from the ground showed protesters clashing with police on several occasions.
Similar anti-lockdown protests were also witnessed in Sydney as police moved to deter demonstrations by arresting protesters for violating stay-in-home orders as New South Wales crossed the 50,000 COVID-19 cases mark since the start of the pandemic. Besides, protests were also witnessed in other cities in NSW.
The NSW police on Saturday arrested 32 people, 20 of whom were in Sydney. They said 265 infringement notices had been sent for a host of violations, including failure to wear a face mask, 232 of which were in metropolitan Sydney.
Additionally, anti-lockdown protesters also took to streets in Brisbane even though the state was not under lockdown. Thousands of protesters were seen on the streets in Brisbane, expressing their solidarity with fellow citizens enduring lockdown in neighbouring states and lambasting the authorities for infringing on their individual rights.
Most attention has been on the Melbourne anti-lockdown protests today but Brisbane has also seen a large turnout. pic.twitter.com/p29cxflS34
— Eden Gillespie (@edengillespie) September 18, 2021
The demonstrations came at a time when Australia is grappling with the coronavirus outbreak, driven by the more transmissible Delta variant, with both Sydney and Melbourne, and the capital Canberra, in strict lockdowns for weeks now. On Saturday, 1,882 new coronavirus cases were reported, most of them in Sydney.
Widespread protests have become a common feature in Australia, where thousands of citizens, chafing under the draconian lockdown restrictions, have participated in anti-lockdown rallies in various cities throughout the country in defiance of the restrictions imposed by the government.
The law enforcement officials have also displayed no restraint in using harsh measures against the protesters, including the use of rubber bullets and tear gas, to disperse crowds that had gathered on roads in a nationwide protest to oppose the imposition of lockdown by the government.
