They may not have used quite those words, but that’s EXACTLY what they did when they issued a formal apology to Avi Yemeni for their multiple illegal arrests.

I don’t care whether you love or hate Avi Yemeni (and neither does he, by the way) but we all owe him at least a ‘thankyou’ for the apology he extracted from VicPol this week, both for what it DOES say, and for what it DOESN’T say, but undeniably means.

First, the apology itself:

Victoria Police have admitted to wrongful arrest of a journalist, and in so doing they have admitted (without saying it) that they are human rights abusers.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Now of course this isn’t news to anyone who has been paying attention. I discussed the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities with Tim Quilty MP in September 2020, where I discussed why, based on the opinions expressed by the Attorney General, I believed (and still believe) that the Victorian Government and Victorian Police were and are in breach of Victorian Human Rights Law:

So this is no ‘wise in hindsight’ moment. This has been obvious to many MANY people for literally years now.

But they’ve finally admitted it… without saying it.

So let’s be grateful for small wins, but let’s also take this opportunity to take stock of the full breadth of the human rights abuses. As my starting point I’ll use the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’… now to be clear this is a document with a lot of problems and I don’t actually think we should be upholding every clause or subclause (although many of them are good, some are terrible) but nevertheless this is something which the Victorian and Australian governments claim to comply with and support… yet many of these ‘Universal Human Rights’ were denied to Victorians by the Victorian Government.

We are still awaiting an apology, let alone some justice, for all of what follows:

Firstly, those with political views that differed from this government were NOT treated as equal to those with similar views to this government. This was most clearly seen in the difference in how Victoria Police treated ‘anti lockdown’ protesters vs ‘BLM’ protesters, both of which took place in defiance of lockdowns at the time:

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

In the first 2 articles we see clearly that even though we, as a group, used our ‘reason and conscience’ to arrive at a differing ‘political or other opinion’, that we still are ‘free and equal in dignity and rights’ and anything less than this is a breach of our Human Rights.

The arbitrary difference in the treatment of ‘anti-lockdown’ protesters vs ‘BLM’ protesters is a Human Rights violation for which we are still awaiting an apology, and will demand some justice.

But this is only the beginning.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 7 is particularly damning of Victoria Police, as it places a burden on them, as enforcers of the law, to ensure equal protection against discrimination. Instead, they enforced the discrimination.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

The fact that ‘anti lockdown’ protesters were arrested, but the aforementioned ‘BLM’ protesters were not, shows the arbitrary nature of these decisions. The video and audio captured by Marty Focker when he was arrested, in which he records Victoria Police Officers instructing each other on how to make up ‘bullshit’ charges to justify the arrests even though they know the charges will get thrown out, brings the Human Rights abuses of Victoria Police, particularly their ‘arbitrary’ enforcement and therefore their breaches of Article 7 and Article 9, into sharp relief.

But we’re still not done.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

I can say with certainty that my privacy, family, and home were very much interfered with by Victoria Police, and my case is mild compared to what was done to others. Victoria Police made a habit of performing ‘welfare checks’ on some people in the early hours of the morning, for the purpose if intimidating them and, in legal speak, ‘interfering’ with them, their family, their home.

And what can we say of ‘attacks upon our honour and reputation’? We had senior bureaucrats and members of the government using highly charged terms including references to nazi’s, ‘right wing’, ‘extremist’, ‘terrorist’. This labelling is not just dangerous, according to the UN it’s a Human Rights abuse.

Article 13.

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Do I need to elaborate on these?

Article 17.

1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 17.2 requires some elaboration, because the right to property was utterly and absolutely abused in Australia, and it’s an under-appreciated right that I think we need to get better at understanding.

You have the right to own property, and not to be arbitrarily deprived of it.

What does it mean to ‘own property’? Does it mean simply to possess something? Or is it deeper than that? Does the right to ‘own’ also imply the right to ‘use’ or ‘make use of’? Many legal precedents in jurisdictions all over the world have concluded that to ‘own’ means more than just to possess… this right implies the right not only to ‘own’ a business, but to operate it. Not only to possess, but to make use of. This is critically important, because when the Victorian Government denied us the right to make use of our property, it violated our right to own property and not be arbitrarily deprived of it.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

‘Through any media’ includes in-person. We absolutely have the right to gather with likeminded people for the purpose of sharing our ideas and information. Then others can record, report, repeat, post, and distribute those ideas through any media. The arrests of Avi were a violation of his rights to participate in this, but also and Police actions against the gathered crowds were in direct violation of Article 19 as well.

Article 20.

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 20.1 is the open-and-shut case against Victoria Police. Some ignorant boot-lickers like to argue that ‘the protests weren’t peaceful’. This is patently false, as any honest viewing of the many live-streams from the events will show. And if you consider the gathered protestors to have been violent, then how much MORE so were the assembled VicPol officers? It’s no coincidence that as soon as Victoria Police took a step back and stopped starting fights, all the violence disappeared instantly. They were always the ones responsible for starting the violence in the first place.

Article 23.

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

The ‘right to work’ is deeper than just to ‘have a job’, it means to be able to do that job. And I would argue that ‘protection against unemployment’ is more than just the existence of the dole, it’s also a protection against being arbitrarily made unemployed. I would argue that the Victorian Government’s actions during Covid has clearly violated Article 23.1 on two counts.

Article 25.

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Remember being locked in your home 23 hours a day? Playgrounds closed? Can’t work, can’t earn, can’t buy necessary items (many necessary items weren’t deemed ‘essential’) like clothing for growing children? Remember depending on online doctors appointments as if that’s some sort of replacement for in-person care? Did you see, or perhaps experience, the deterioration in well-being for yourself or your family?

By my count we’re up to 11 different Article’s of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we either violated, or at least to a layman’s eye there’s a good case to be made to say that we did.

Victoria Police apologising to Avi is a good step, and whether they like it or not it acknowledges the sheer scale of the human rights abuses they’ve committed. Now we can use that apology as the thin edge of the wedge, and with continued and relentless pressure we will extract honest apologies (and much more) from Vicpol in coming years.