You’ve got to hand it to Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, he’s really putting his state on the global map – for the wrong reasons.
I’ve reported for months that Victoria’s state bureaucracy, especially its police, have gotten rolling drunk on the unelected power they’ve seized using the thin excuse of “public health”. Victoria Police have been operating with Gestapo-like zeal, harassing and fining citizens at a rate far exceeding any other state. From teenagers taking a driving lesson with Mum, to pensioners trying to take their state-allotted hour out of house arrest, no-one has been safe from the truncheon of Victorian bureaucracy.
Except, of course, the socialist Andrews’ cronies and fellow-travellers. Tens of thousands of BLM protesters took to the streets of Melbourne without so much as a fine. But police are monstering and arresting anyone who even looks like they might be harbouring un-approved thoughts, let alone expressing them on social media.
Even pregnant women in country towns.
The arrest of a pregnant anti-lockdown protester, which was live-streamed on social media, has been called a “symbol of dictatorial control in Victoria” and “overkill”.
Zoe Buhler, 28, was handcuffed in her living room and arrested for incitement on Wednesday afternoon while her children and husband watched on.
She had earlier posted on Facebook an invitation to people to attend “Freedom Day Ballarat” — a “peaceful protest” calling for an end to Victoria’s Stage 4 coronavirus lockdown.
The world is noticing. The incident was reported in the New York Post, while conservative social media giant PragerU labelled it “terrifying”. “Australia allowed #BLM protests but is arresting people who organize protests against their lockdown,” PragerU said in a Facebook post including the video of the arrest.
“Excuse me, incitement for what, what on Earth? I’m in my pyjamas, my two kids are here,” she can be heard saying in the video.
“I have an ultrasound in an hour because I’m pregnant.”
It should be noted that Buhler’s Facebook post emphasised, “All social distancing measures are to be followed so we don’t get arrested please. Please wear a mask unless you have a medical reason not to.” So we don’t get arrested – vain hope, in the socialist police state of Victoria, where the government couldn’t manage a hotel quarantine program, but police have plenty of time to comb social media for outbreaks of WrongThink.
Some local politicians and media have also expressed their disgust.
Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie said there was no need to arrest and handcuff the woman in front of her children ““[…](It) is just absolute overkill.”
[…]Sky News Australia broadcaster Alan Jones took to Facebook to criticise the arrest, saying Premier Daniel Andrews was the “only person guilty of incitement.”
[…]2GB broadcaster Chris Smith described images of the handcuffed woman as “symbolic of dictatorial control[…]and the symbol will be that woman in handcuffs when she comes from Ballarat, she was talking about a gathering and discussing social distancing.
“Is it the crime of the century to do that? She probably only would get 20 people at the event and they’d all be social distanced.”
Victoria police have been getting more and more heavy-handed in lockstep with Victorians getting angrier and angrier at the state’s lockdowns. Working-class outer-Melbourne suburbs like Dandenong are particular hotspots of defiance, with repeated clashes with police.
Dandenong’s Albanian Muslim community are especially leading anti-lockdown protests after a Perth imam said that “(Muslims and) the wider community must stand against this tyranny, against this fascism which is happening in our country… Especially what that dictator Dan Andrews is doing to our fellow Australians in Victoria”.
“In Victoria, they were walking, exercising and singing the Australian anthem, proud to be Australians[…]If we Muslims don’t go hand to hand with the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus, anyone even if they don’t believe in god, to save our community or save our country, we will end up in a dictatorship.”
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