Protestors taking part in this Saturday’s NoToPope Coalition rally in Sydney will no longer be fined $5,500 for ‘annoying’ World Youth Day pilgrims, thanks to a federal court ruling this week.

Two weeks ago, the Coalition announced its intention to wear T-shirts criticising the Pope and hand out condoms to pilgrims. The NSW Government brought in emergency laws for July which stated that anyone doing anything to ‘cause annoyance or inconvenience’ to the Catholic pilgrims could be fined $5,500.

Activists Rachel Evans and Amber Pike from the NoToPope Coalition took the NSW government to court, arguing that the laws were unconstitutional.

On Tuesday the court ruled the specific clause relating to annoying and inconveniencing pilgrims went beyond the intention of State Parliament, although the ‘inconvenience’ aspect remains intact.

“We never wanted to be annoying or inconvenient,” Evans told MCV.

“Our rally was always going to be peaceful. We will be peaceful and come out with more confidence that we won’t be fined wearing t-shirts criticising the pope’s policy on condoms, abortion, homosexuality, and reproductive rights in general. So it’s a real victory, not just for us but for the protest movement as a whole.”

Professor Spencer Zifcak, the Vice-President of Liberty Victoria, an advocacy group for civil rights said: “The laws were a breach of people’s rights to express their opinions freely; and the laws were expressed in such broad terms that they could apply to any kind of protest behaviour and that’s fundamentally undesirable.”

The NoToPope Coalition intends to unfurl a large banner in a public place, listing ten alternative ‘commandments’ such as ‘thou shalt respect the right to protest’, as part of Saturday’s protest.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Title
Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Email
Website
Write the displayed characters
Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.
	Add Comment