MELBOURNE, Australia – With black clothes and signs with the words “enough is enough”, thousands took to the streets in Australia on Monday to protest violence and discrimination against women, while a showdown in the country’s power halls caused by various accusations of rape continues to grow.
The marches in at least 40 cities were an outburst of anger from women over a problem that has remained untouched for too long, say organizers, who estimate that 110,000 people nationwide attended the protests.
With the next national election likely to take place as early as August, experts say it is something the Conservative government, which has come under critical criticism over the way it has handled the accusations, is ignoring on its own.
Public outrage in Australia over violence against women came when thousands of people in London joined protests over the weekend over the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared while walking earlier this month.
In Australia, the message to the government was that ‘there are a large number of women across the country enough, frankly, of their heinous reaction to sexual assault and harassment’, said Janine Hendry, the main organizer of the marches. “We want change and we want it now.”
In Canberra, the capital of Australia, police estimate that 5,000 to 6,000 protesters gathered on the lawn outside the parliament building on Monday, where lawmakers are meeting.
Brittany Higgins, a former political assistant whose accusation that she was raped in parliament in 2019, ripped the country’s power halls and led the marches on Monday, appeared at the Canberra protest. She said there was an ‘awful social acceptance’ of sexual violence in Australia.
“My story was on the front page for the sole reason that it was a painful reminder to women that if it could happen in the Parliament building, it could happen anywhere,” she said.
She said she was treated like a ‘political problem’ after accusing her colleagues in the ruling center-right Liberal Party. “I was raped by a colleague in the House of Commons, and for so long it felt like the people around me just cared about where it happened and what it could mean to them,” she said.
On the other side of the doors of the parliament building, Prime Minister Scott Morrison from the opposition Labor Party cheered. On Sunday, he did not want to join the protests and invited a small delegation of organizers to meet with him in his office.
The organizers refused, said on Twitter“We have already arrived at the front door, now the government must cross the threshold and come to us. We will not meet behind closed doors. ”
The prime minister told parliament that the government “understands and shares the frustrations of women and men across the country.”
But he asked for unity. “We must not allow our frustration at failing to achieve so many of the results to undermine the unity needed to continue our shared progress,” he said. Morrison said.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese and a number of senior Labor leaders, as well as a handful of Liberal ministers, attended the march in Canberra.
Australia’s next federal election is due to be held by May 2022, and experts have said the marches should be a warning to the ruling Liberal Party.
Its leader, Mr. Morrison, was criticized after he said that the seriousness of Ms. Higgins’ seriousness only hit him after his wife ordered him to think that one of their daughters had been assaulted. And his Secretary of Defense, Linda Reynolds, has filed a defamation suit and agreed to pay damages to Ms. To pay Higgins after she called her a ‘lying cow’.
“A government that has been described as a ‘women’s problem’ for several years is now really in trouble with women,” said Sarah Maddison, a professor of politics at the University of Melbourne.
“I can not remember personally experiencing the level of distress that women are now experiencing,” she said. “I think here’s something with this level of distress that yields an extraordinary moment in our politics.”
Support for the Liberal Party has been slowly declining among women for years, said Sarah Cameron, a lecturer in politics at the University of Sydney, although it was not enough to stop the party from winning the last federal election in 2019 . Dr. Cameron added that the party “ignores this trend at their peril.”
In Sydney, organizers estimated that at least 10,000 people had gathered in the central business district.
There, Michael Bradley, the lawyer of a now deceased woman, who said she was sexually assaulted in 1988 by a man who is currently a member of parliament, asked to reform the legal system. Earlier this month, 50-year-old Attorney General Christian Porter confirmed he was the subject of the indictment.
Mr. Porter vehemently denied the allegations and police said earlier this month that they had concluded an investigation, citing a lack of evidence.
The woman died by suicide last year. It is not known if her death is related to her rape charge.
“It is not fair that the whole burden of the system is survivors,” he said. Bradley said.
In Melbourne, organizers rolled up a banner featuring the names of women and children who have died as a result of gender-based violence since 2008. Protesters ‘sang to hell’ with the patriarchy. Organizers estimate that at least 5,000 people attended – the maximum number allowed under the state’s coronavirus restrictions.
“We are here today because men can still control us for one reason or another,” said Ebonie Grinlaubs, 21, a bartender. “We start on the street, we start marching, and eventually it comes to the top.”
“In the 1970s and ’80s, we did this work, and we still do,” said Jill Wilson, a 62-year-old educator, who has been campaigning for women’s rights for decades. “It’s time for men and women to change,” she said.
The marches took place on the same day that Mr. Porter has started a defamation suit against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over an online article on the 33-year-old accused of assault. In the statement of his lawyers that he filed, it is said that the article, in which Mr. Porter is not mentioned, defamatory charges are made.
In an email, the ABC said it would “defend the action.”