City Lockdown to Stop Protest Sends ‘Terrible Message’: Australian Director For Human Rights Watch

A lone passenger sits at a tram stop on a mostly-empty city center street on the first day of a lockdown as the state of Victoria looks to curb the spread of COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, on July 16, 2021. Sandra Sanders/Reuters

The Australian Director at Human Rights Watch Elaine Pearson has described the decision by Victorian authorities to shut down and divert the capital city’s public transport system to prevent a potential anti-lockdown protest as “neither necessary nor proportionate.”

Writing on Twitter on Sept. 16, she added, “And it sends a terrible message to more authoritarian regimes who don’t need encouragement in cracking down on protests they don’t like.”