When tens of thousands of Australians turned up at Sydney’s latest “Freedom Rally” last Saturday, it showed that people were “fed up” with the state government’s COVID-19 restrictions, vaccine mandates, and its push to vaccinate children a speaker of the protest said.
She noted she had been harassed and received death threats due to her stand against vaccinations and alleged that the mainstream media was “trying to create a segregation in society” by labelling people who raised reasonable concerns about the vaccine’s side effects and those against forced vaccination as “Anti-Vaxxers.”
“It’s an intentional misrepresentation of people for the purpose of creating division in society,” she said. “There are many vaccinated people here today that don’t want forced vaccination.”
One of the protest organisers Simeon Boikov, also known as the Aussie Cossack, said he knew when New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard signed the exemption for unvaccinated people to participate in the Sydney COVID-19 rally, it was a sign that the government was losing.
“Yesterday I couldn’t buy a cup of coffee. I haven’t been to the pub in two years. But today, I shook hands with 98,000 people,” said Boikov, who also works in the construction industry.
“Freedom isn’t free,” he added, “If we don’t protest, the government will notice that people aren’t against them. And they’ll keep going.”
Leon, a protest attendee, who refused to give his surname due to privacy concerns, said he had travelled about 300 kilometres from Taree, a town on the Mid North Coast NSW, to join the rally.
“We’re sick of the lies, we’re sick of the standover tactics from the government, we’re sick of the intimidation… and hands-off with our kids,” he told The Epoch Times.
Asked what motivated him to take the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Sydney, he said he believed the mandates were implementing a form of totalitarianism.
Another protester, Peter Ousby, said he saw the strings of events currently unfolding as a result of a spiritual issue for the whole society, which was “working out politically, financially, family-wise.”
“I know people who have lost others, who have suicided because of the house arrests and the prohibition on providing for your families and yourself and conducting your livelihood,” Ousby noted. “The cure is a lot worse than the complaint.”
Meanwhile, Kate, who gave a pseudonym due to privacy concerns, revealed she was a teacher for 19 years but was dismissed two nights prior to the protest after refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I’m gonna make my own decisions based on what I think is the best thing to do,” she said. “The data from this trial vaccine is not being put out there for people to know, and that’s a question you would have for that.”
NSW Police Central Metropolitan Region Commander, Assistant Commissioner Peter Thurtell said he was pleased with the peaceful nature of the protests.
Attendees conducted themselves peacefully, and there were no arrests made and no infringements issued during the protests.
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