A short documentary we participated in, on Australian peace activists for the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (University of Sydney) and their response to the 2003 Iraq war, as an educational resource. #documentary #microdoco
00:30I was in Jordan, in Amman, on the 15th of February, and I'd been there a few days and we were preparing to go to Baghdad, and I remember the manager of the hotel calling me in to watch the TV with him, the news coverage, and what I saw was just astounding.
00:54I just couldn't believe it. And that was — almost every major capital city in the world, there was huge, massive outpouring of the public in protest to this war.
01:08If you believe that that is wrong, make some noise.
01:19Barcelona, London, right across the United States, and of course one of the first on the news was Sydney.
01:26It was massive.
01:34I said to the manager, Fayez, I said, I've never seen anything like that in Sydney.
01:41I said, I've never seen those numbers for anything.
01:44I was in Ireland in February 2003, and I kind of had this sense about being part of something so much bigger than myself.
01:58And I'd heard the stories come in about what had happened in protest marches around the world.
02:04And so there was this great sense of celebration that rather than just accepting this inevitability of war and militarism and going to attack the enemy, this whole uprising across the world.
02:16So I remember just kind of picking up the posters all around me and just knowing that this was a massive kind of outpouring of hope.
02:30So we went with our video camera into Hyde Park, and we kind of blagged our way onto the upper platform of the stage, which was reserved for the media, and pointed our camera downwards.
02:40And we were absolutely astonished at the sheer numbers of people who kept on coming through into the park for that demonstration.
02:58The other significant thing is that it was attended by people from all walks of life, ordinary people, young and old, from across the country.
03:05I just feel so strongly that it would be absolutely the wrong thing to do to go to war in Iraq.
03:12I remember being profoundly frustrated and angry about what was going on.
03:16I felt we were being lied to the whole time.
03:18I thought the rhetoric of the governments, the Australian government and other Western governments, didn't make any sense.
03:24And I felt that no matter what we were saying as the people, that we were just not being listened to.
03:29I also felt incredible sadness for the people of Iraq and what was going to happen to them.
03:35I was the victim of a SCAD attack in 1991 in Israel before I came to Australia.
03:50And one SCAD made so much damage and frightened me for so many years.
03:54And I was thinking what they were going to do to the Iraqis was going to be much more devastating than that.
03:58It was going to be horrible.
04:00And I was also feeling terrible for the soldiers who were going to go from Australia to fight in a war that they have nothing to do with.
04:07So it was a mixed mixture of feelings, a lot of frustration and powerlessness as well.
04:12The amount of energy that goes into preparing for war and what it does is creates an atmosphere that the enemy is wrong.
04:27And you build that up just like before the war with Iraq.
04:31We had all this thing about how Iraq was evil and Saddam Hussein was evil.
04:37And there was a lot of exaggerated stuff and how he was a terrorist and it was all ridiculous.
04:43I was handing out leaflets about the rally that was going to be held in Sydney.
04:49And usually when you hand out leaflets for rallies and things, people just ignore you and kind of turn away from you.
04:55On this occasion, people were grabbing, people were putting their hands up and grabbing the leaflets and I couldn't hand them out quickly enough.
05:03This is President Bush's war. This is Prime Minister Clare's war. This is John Howard's war. But this is not Australia's war.
05:22Australians don't want war.
05:25There was immense joy on the occasion and an enormous sense of determination. Everyone was saying they can't ignore this.
05:36An enormous feeling of sort of we are the people and we can do it.
05:41It was about a million. That's 5% of the entire population that came out of their houses and went onto the street.
05:48Mothers and fathers and children and ordinary people, business people out on the streets united in one cause was quite a powerful experience.
06:05Someone brought along a contraption which had John Howard dressed as a dog and then they made the dog move over and kiss President Bush's backside.
06:19That was the sort of feeling that Howard was just Bush's man.
06:24But there was this feeling of confidence that this number of people would surely convince even a Howard government.
06:33This was the first time in history that people had rallied and demonstrated against a war before it started.
06:41This was something very, very different and something very special and I think it's something to hold on to.
06:48In the real build up I was in Sydney and I was really depressed about it and I was sitting in this horrible, dark, dank, grimy, dismal, sticky carpet pub on a beautiful sunny afternoon.
07:05Um, just sort of, you know, feeling really, really angry about the whole thing.
07:11And as I was sitting there I realised that the whole bar had fallen silent.
07:15And the guy behind the bar, the barman, was like, you know, groping for his remote control and he was, you know, turning the sound up on the television.
07:23Everyone was turning around and looking at the television.
07:25And I turned around and I looked and I saw the Sydney Opera House with no war written in big red letters across the top sail.
07:32And I was like, oh my God.
07:35Just before nine, they scaled the outside of the largest sail and had 20 minutes to do their handiwork in thick red paver paint.
07:43The two men blocked a door with access to the peak, forcing police rescue to climb to the top.
07:49It was all very friendly, obviously at a height like that you don't knock around with anybody's life.
07:54And then I saw the face of David Burgess on the screen.
07:57I was like, you!
07:59Of course it's you and Will Saunders also.
08:02Um, and I just think that was such a powerful and beautiful moment for so many of us who were feeling so frustrated because we wanted the world to know that not everybody in Australia was supportive of this war.
08:1533-year-old David Burgess and 42-year-old English National Dr. Will Saunders were charged and released on conditional bail.
08:23Both were unapologetic.
08:25Our Prime Minister is about to go and maliciously damage a whole nation.
08:29And I ask you all again, what would you do today to stop the war?
08:39I remember I was very uncertain as to just how successful we would be.
08:46And of course, as we know, people in the political executive don't really take all that much notice of the people.
08:58And they don't even take that much notice of international war.
09:04And that's a really great tragedy.
09:07There's no quick and easy way.
09:12And I think similarly with the outpouring of opposition to the invasion of Iraq, in the short term it wasn't successful.
09:22But in the longer term, if we can get the Australian public thinking about the fact that this mustn't happen again, and that we need a different process, for example, we need a process whereby Parliament approves before our troops go to war, then that would be a positive outcome.
09:40A lot of people felt at the time, well, we demonstrated, we did our best, we did everything we could, and yet we failed to stop the invasion.
09:48And I've had countless conversations with people in which that has exerted a rather depressing effect on their willingness to join in future efforts to try to forestall wars.
10:00However, what I would say is that that demonstration did more than anything to establish public opinion as a player in any future calculation to go to war.
10:11And with the outturn of the Iraq war, the fact that all its stated justifications turned out to be false, so people who went on those demonstrations should not feel despondent.
10:23They should instead feel that they have acted decisively to make the world a safer place.
