Newsflash: Violent industry uses violence towards its critics

Most people who have taken part in a protest will be able to tell you that, the vast majority of the time, they are peaceful events. You show up, hold a sign, maybe hear some speeches over a loudspeaker and potentially even engage in some kind of civil disobedience, such as briefly blocking a road or refusing to leave a venue when asked to. You expect to be shouted at, criticised, maybe insulted or grabbed at while you make your voice heard. 

At Farm Transparency Project events, we warn people of these risks and remind them of the importance that we remain calm, even in stressful or high intensity situations. We remind people to treat everyone with respect, even those we are protesting, who are often the perpertrators of horrific animal abuse. Even the police, whose blatant abuse of powers is systemic across the country. We believe that, if you engage in activities that are of concern to the public, such as breeding, confining and killing animals, then protest is inevitable. So we assume a level of, if not respect, then tolerance. But we prepare for the worst. Because for industries built on harming and killing animals, harming humans who disagree with them isn't much of a leap. 

Australian Pork Limited is the tax-payer funded lobby group for the Australian Pork industry, as well as the administrators of the Australian Pork Industry Quality Assurance Program (APIQ). Over the past decade, Farm Transparency Project has repeatedly exposed Australian pig farms and slaughterhouses for horrific animal abuse. Investigators have revealed pigs screaming and thrashing in agony inside industry-approved gas chambers, and shown that controversial and brutal practices such as extreme confinement of pregnant mother pigs and the routine killing of 'runt' piglets by bashing their heads on the floor, are still widespread across Victorian pig farms. 

In the past two years, we have documented horrific and sickening conditions and behaviour across the industry. These include the rape of a female pig by a worker on a Victorian pig farm, and shocking conditions on a South Australian piggery where a pile of corpses was found in a shed, live pigs were seen cannibalising the dead, and pigs were filmed with large necrotic wounds.

So, when Australia Pork Limited publicly announced the date of their AGM, we decided to organise a protest to speak up for the millions of pigs that have suffered at the hands of the Australian pork industry, supported by APL. 

On Thursday 16th October, 20 protestors entered a public building, walked through a set of open doors and opened an unlocked door into a conference room. We held signs showing the suffering of pigs in Australian farms and slaughterhouses and we were prepared to deliver mock awards, calling out four Australian piggeries for 'Outstanding Cruelty to Pigs.' Our act of opening a door and attempting to walk inside was met with aggression from those inside. Protestors who were inside were knocked over and physically pushed out. One had her leg trapped in the door by pork industry delegates, who refused to let her extract it, instead continuing to close the door. We tried another door and the response was the same. This time multiple people were grabbed and forced out of the room by attendees. One protestor sustained serious bruising to her leg after being pushed against the door, while others were roughly grabbed by the arms and neck. This ended when one of the protestors ended up on the ground, out of breath and experiencing shock after being choked by an APL delegate. 

In Australia, no individual is entitled to assault another, regardless of whether or not they are trespassing. Yet that is what these upstanding industry representatives did. These people were not acting in self-defence. They were using physical force to avoid taking accountability for the violence of their industry. They are not police, they are not security, they are not millitary, yet they believe they are entitled to grab, drag, choke and push other people; and they do so with smirks on their faces. 

Eventually, all but three protestors were forcibly removed and the doors were barricaded using chairs. The three remaining inside included two women who had been injured in the scuffle, and a first-aid trained photographer who had stayed to help the activist who was on the ground. One of the injured women was me; I was bleeding from my hand and was bruised from becoming trapped in the doorway while APL delegates attempted to push away those behind me. Despite expressing a wish to leave, the door remained barricaded. Another was opened across the room from where we lay, and we were told that we could instead exit through there - which would force us to walk through a closely packed group of industry representatives, including many who had taken part in the scrum at the door. We refused, instead choosing to wait for the police.

When they arrived, the police refused to open the closest door, instead pushing and shoving at myself and my fellow activist as we attempted to help our friend who was struggling to stand. They responded to pleas for help by yelling at us to MOVE and by pushing us roughly in the back. 

Outside, the police were little better. They took statements from those inside, saying that there had been claims of trespass, yet they failed to photograph injuries sustained by activists at the hands of those attending the conference, or follow up when one activist expressed a desire to make a complaint about assault. Some of them removed their name badges, while others attempted to unlawfully seize our PA system, which we were using to play the sound of pigs being gassed in a Victorian slaughterhouse. 

Since the events at the conference, I have repeatedly asked myself what I would do if an event I had organised was protested. Would I react with anger? Frustration? Tears? Laughter? I'm honestly unsure. But what I know for sure is that I would never react with the violence we were met with. I would never see someone yelling out in pain and continue to force a door shut on her leg, or push someone in the back while they're asking them to help me. As a movement, we are often disparaged as being disruptive lawbreakers, but I've never known an animal activist to barricade people in a room or laugh while wrestling them to the ground. 

But here's the thing. We may be nonviolent, but that doesn't mean we can't fight. Whether it's by scaling walls of slaughterhouses or disrupting those who profit from animal abuse, we will never stop fighting until every animal is free. 

Harley 

Bruising following the APL disruption

Testimonies from activists involved in the APL disruption:

We went there simply to present awards recognising the barbarity of the industry, and their behavior, while unexpected really is not surprising. They treated us the way they treat animals. We didn't go there to be involved in physicality. We are nonviolent protesters. We are peaceful.

When I reached the doors there were already people on the floor, on the ground and from the inside of the room they (APL) were attempting to close the doors with people's bodies still in the doorway. They were trying to slam the doors into the people, disregarding that they were causing physical harm, jamming doors into arms, legs and torsos. People were calling out for help. They were calling out for them to stop, that they were being hurt. They were calling out for them to give them the opportunity to get off the ground and they were being ignored.

There was another door to the left of me and it opened. We were heading in and immediately it felt like we were being rugby tackled,  there was a lot of movement. There were bodies everywhere, we were contorted into every position possible. At one point I had a man with his full body up against me, fully pressed against my back. It was incredibly uncomfortable. I called out that I could feel him in the back. He then brought his elbow back and was pushing it into my throat. I called out that I was being choked and one of the women started laughing and said no she's not. You're not being choked. This affected my ability to breathe. 

There was so much movement around me, I had no way of staying on my feet at this point, falling to the ground unable to keep balance or breathe properly. There were bodies all over the top of me and again a lot of physicality with pushing and shoving. It was so unnecessarily violent. Holding my hands up to my face and attempting to edge my way to the side out of harms way, my breathing became panicked and I started trembling. I was terrified I was going to be trampled by these men who were clearly violent. I could hear someone calling out. There's a lady down a lady down there, stop, there's a lady down and they ignored it. They kept going. They were vicious. It was fun to them, this was every day to them, they were laughing. 

Some activists saw me on the ground and also started calling out to stop and give me some space. They (APL) tried to touch me and separate me from the activists and I am so grateful that they stood their ground and didn't allow that to happen. Terrified to think of what would happen if I were to be alone in that room with all of those people. I needed space, they wouldn't give it, eventually I was able to roll over onto my side, still trembling, still terrified, maybe I was going into trauma response. I felt unsafe. I wanted to get out, I'd been assaulted and I wanted to leave. They had barricaded the doors. They had barricaded the doors with chairs. The door was less than a metre away from me. 

Once I got up I was held up by activists. My legs felt weak. My body felt weak. I took a seat. They wouldn't stop filming us but wouldn't allow us to film them. They were laughing. The women were laughing. It was disgusting and they refused to let us out. It's like they wanted to parade us through the crowd to humiliate us and to further berate us. At that point we were in a very dangerous position. They could have opened the door and let us out and they refused. 

Initially It was a relief when the police arrived. I actually thought they would unlock the door and just let us out even if they would speak to us after that, but no they didn't do that either. It was almost like they were the barbaric industry's personal bodyguards. They didnt ask any questions, they just came in and started pushing and shoving. They refused to give their details. I was asking them to help me out and they refused to assist. They started pushing the others around me, just yelling at us to move, move, like they do at the protests. Again, they could've just opened the door and let us out and they refused. We tried to explain to them that I needed support to leave, they wouldn't listen, they refused, they pushed us down. My legs were in a way that I couldn't lift up from the ground. Holding my arms in the air, pleading for them to help me out again. They just yelled at us to get out. There was nothing that they were doing to provide a safe passage out for us and when they did grab me, they grabbed me by my arms and squeezed them so tight that I have bruising on my arms. I called out to them that they were hurting me but they just continued to be more forceful. They were stopping the others around me from helping me.  As it turns out, they'd removed their badges, they wouldn't give us their details. 

When the Sergeant approached us, I'm not sure he really understood how terribly his team had conducted themselves. They made no attempt to de-escalate. While he acknowledged my experience, it beggars belief that he then instructed the same team who had assaulted activists to then further question them in the courtyard, literally investigating themselves. 

How shameful that behaviour, that there was no one in that room that tried to stop the violence, not one person. How typical of an industry that exploits animals and kills them by bashing their bodies into the ground.

Anonymous activist

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I am a small built 20 year old female human who was picked up and thrown on the ground and crushed together with my friend, who is also another small built young woman, by two big built older men in collared shirts.

The way they punched, grabbed, chocked, threw us around and spoke to us was with absolute disgusting brutality! The looks on their faces whilst doing this to us was evil in itself.  This was all caught on camera and in front of many others!

The grown women in that meeting, Margo Andrae being one of these women, also stood there and watched with smirks on their faces as these men treated us this way.

The rage that came from every single person in that room that was a part of APL was a feeling straight from hell. You haven't seen evil until you have met that group of people (Industry). 
They do evil to animals and humans.

They brutally torture, kill, rape, beat pigs and their newborn babies to death, let pigs live in unimaginable filth and suffering every day, and yet this industry falsely advertise and lie to the nation and get away with it, and will also now get away with treating people this way.  
If they can do this to us, especially women and get away with it on camera and in front of the public, imagine what they really do to pigs behind closed doors... which has been proven and exposed by FTP, Animals Australia and other animal welfare organisations.

I can honestly say that I have personally seen what this industry does behind those closed doors to innocent, terrified pigs and now I have personally seen what they can and will do to humans out in the open.

This organisation (ALP) need to be shut down, and has a lot to answer for!

Natalie and Tanesha

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I knew we were going to be met with resistance and that the message wasn't going to be warmly embraced, though they still needed to hear it. I grossly underestimated the violent, irrational, and angry behaviour of the APL meeting delegates.

After getting into the meeting area with other animal advocates, Chris Delforce began his awards ceremony. It was very noisy, lots of pushing, shoving and grabbing of shirts, almost like we were in a rugby match.

For a moment, it went calm and quiet, and no one was attempting to remove me. Which I found out later was partly due to the delegates pinning down a lady on the ground, as well as my flannel shirt disguise.

In the quiet, I held up an 'end pig farming' sign. After that it was on. I was dragged and pushed out. While I got off lightly with a skinned knee, other advocates weren't so lucky, suffering multiple bruises.

The police were very unprofessional, trying to provoke a hostile response and bully advocates into confessing being responsible. Treating everyone with such contempt and disdain, it was as if they worked directly for Australian Pork. Violence from a violent industry. 

With that in mind, it makes me more determined to speak up and challenge a cruel and unethical industry.

Lachlan

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Last Thursday, myself and other peaceful protesters, who always pride ourselves on conducting our activism respectfully and peacefully, were met with violence, anger, and aggression from the Australian pork industry and pig farmers.

Some of these activists were left bruised and bleeding. When the police arrived, it was extremely disappointing to see how we were treated. One police officer even went as far as hitting a female protester's arm simply because she tried to read his badge number.

We, as protesters, were not being violent or aggressive. Yet, we were treated with no care or respect, while the pig farmers met us with complete hostility, and police did nothing about it.

This is yet another prime example of police protecting those who have no regard for the welfare of animals or even human beings. If this is how they treat humans who protest peacefully and stand up against the extreme cruelty these industries inflict upon animals, imagine how they're treating the pigs.

This is nothing but a cruel, corrupt industry that needs to be shut down for good.

Samie