No conviction recorded against anti-genocide Pine Gap activists

The Alice Springs Magistrates Court decided on September 14 not to record a criminal conviction against two activists, charged with “failing to cease to loiter” on a public road near the United States spy base Pine Gap in the Northern Territory last October.

Jorgen Doyle and Yul Scarf locked on to 44-gallon drum, filled with concrete, on a public road on Arrente Country for nine hours to protest Australian complicity to the genocide in Gaza through intelligence provided by Pine Gap.

The action prevented Pine Gap workers from accessing the base. It was the third action Mparntwe for Falastin had organised.

Doyle and Scarf tendered evidence that their actions were motivated by their sincerely held beliefs — borne out by the facts — that Pine Gap is contributing intelligence to the Israeli military to facilitate its ongoing genocidal war.

Doyle said the action helped to highlight Pine Gap’s role in the genocide in Gaza. “Pine Gap is sharing surveillance data, including geolocation information from mobile phones, with the genocidal Israeli regime, who are targeting journalists and their families, children, teachers, doctors, patients and the entire population of Palestine”.

The court heard from expert witnesses Richard Tanter and Chris Sidoti.

Sidoti is a former senior member of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. That commission concluded that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit acts of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Doyle said Sidoti’s affidavit in support of their case underscored that Israel is committing a genocide. Sidoti raised the obligation of third party states, such as Australia, “to take all measures within their power to end genocide and to ensure that they are not participating in it, via, for example, the transfer of weapons and military intelligence”.

Richard Tanter, Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, and a leading independent expert on the Pine Gap military intelligence facility, said: “We know that signals intelligence data, captured by Pine Gap-controlled ORION satellites, has been historically made available to Israel. Unless the Australian direct and indirect military relationship to Israeli activities in the Gaza Strip are closely reviewed by the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, it is not possible for the Australian government to assure the parliament and the Australian public that Australia is not complicit in acts of genocide.”

“We’ve taken great strength seeing Falastini resist for their land, their lives, their culture and future. We take strength standing beside Arrernte people demanding the Country on which Pine Gap is imposed be returned to them. We find courage in the global movement to interrupt fascism and genocide and we hope others take courage from our efforts too,” Scarf concluded.