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SYDNEY: Protesters planning to hand out condoms to Catholic pilgrims
during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Australia this month face
arrest under special new police powers, critics said Tuesday.
Police and emergency service volunteers will be
able to stop conduct that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to
participants” in World Youth Day events expected to draw hundreds
of thousands of young people to Sydney.
“To make something that causes inconvenience
to people the basis for a criminal offense is both unnecessary and
repugnant,” said the president of the New South Wales Bar
Association, Anna Katzmann.
The presence of someone wearing the clothes or
insignia of another religion could be seen as annoying or
inconvenient, as could the presence of protesters, Katzmann said in
a statement on behalf of the lawyers’ group.
“If I were to wear a T-shirt proclaiming that
‘World Youth Day is a waste of public money’ and refuse to
remove it when an officer of the Rural Fire Service asks me to, I
would commit a criminal offense,” she said.
“How ridiculous is that?”
A group calling itself the NoToPope Coalition
has already announced plans to hand out condoms to pilgrims as part
of protests against the Pope’s opposition to contraception,
homosexuality and abortion.
The coalition, which brings together Christians,
atheists and gay groups, plans to rally in the city on July 19 and
march towards Randwick Racecourse where pilgrims will be gathering
for a Papal Mass the next day.
The five-day celebration of Catholic youth,
ending with the Mass which is expected to draw some 500,000 people,
has been billed as a major boost to the economy of Australia’s
largest city.
But there has been a stream of grumbles over the
event’s cost, its impact on businesses as well as the
inconvenience it will cause the city’s residents.
The coalition said it would also protest state
funding of almost 110 million Australian dollars ($104 million) for
an event staged by the Catholic Church, saying it should be spent on
community services instead.
-- AFP
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