Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

With the Gulf War and the Dili massacre
on our doorstep, many in the Australian
community sat up and took particular
notice of what our role was in warfare,
both in our region and more generally.
And generally, we didn’t like what we
saw.
FoE Melbourne played a big role in
pulling together the response of people
to AIDEX in ‘91, organising training and
logistics as well as lobbying. Along with
other anti-military groups around at the
time, we held smaller protests outside of
some of Melbourne’s key war mongering
institutions. We coordinated travel and
sent a strong contingent to the protest in
Canberra. There was even a huge banner
drop off the Westgate Bridge with the
simple message “Stop AIDEX”.
AIDEX ‘91 was a huge success in that
the Australian government and industry
has never had the guts (or perhaps
stupidity) to hold another exhibition of
its kind so blatantly, even in these times
when war mongering is seen as patriotic
duty. However, AIDEX ‘91 also saw
hundreds of people seriously wounded
by the Australian Federal Police and
hired security personnel. Several hundred
official complaints (from broken bones,
bleeding wounds, to wheel chair bound
participants being thrown into the gutters)
were made against the Australian Federal
Police.
FoE has had a proud history in working
on many issues and we should not forget
that peace and disarmament have been
some of the big ones. FoE Melbourne
was seriously targeted, sustaining serious
attacks, both physically and politically, for
it’s role in calling for a peaceful resolution
of the Gulf War of ‘91.
The year following AIDEX’91, FoE
Melbourne helped organise against
the Aerospace Exhibition. This huge
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exhibition, displaying aircraft and related
technology, attracts weekend family
crowds in their thousands, but also has
a sinister underbelly displaying and
selling military technology. In 1993,
FoE Melbourne again joined with other
national groups to organise thousands
of people to attend a desert protest as
part of the Close Nurrungar campaign,
a desert-based US military spy facility,
now obsolete and absorbed into Pine Gap.
More recently, FoE helped coordinate
the protests against the US spy base Pine
Gap in 2002 and has been looking into
the crazy missile defence proposal from
the USA. And of course in the last few
years FoE has joined with what many
maintain are the majority of Australians
who vigorously opposed the second Iraq
War in 2003 and continue to do so as we
go to print. FoE’s participation in each
and every one of these campaigns has
been vital.
For many of us semi-old timers of FoE,
all this anti-military, pro-peace rah-rah
began with war and with the Stop AIDEX
campaigns in either ‘89 or ‘91. Hours
of footage exist on the 1991 campaign;
stories abound; some scars may even still
be evident. Ask around. FoE was there, as
always. Flying the flag, never flagging.
Thousands of people descended on Canberra to
shut down the AIDEX arms exhibition, 1991
FoE 30 Years 49