Perth Voice Interactive

THE City of Perth has declared its Rod Evans Community Centre out of bounds for a public meeting about Palestine featuring Indian intellectual Vijay Prashad.

This follows on the heels of the University of WA forcing the meeting off campus last week (“Students claim UWA tried to block speaker,” Voice, October 26, 2024).

Australian-Palestinian UWA student Ahmad Alqaisi told the Voice the centre’s management contacted him on Friday, October 25, to inform him the venue would no longer be available for “political events”.

Confirmed

The call came less than 24 hours after a phone call and email he believed confirmed a booking had been secured.

“They told me that the centre is only to be used for community events,” Mr Alqaisi said.

“I asked, ‘Aren’t I part of your community’.”

The council’s media office told the Voice there had been no booking because the requisite form had not been received. The City had also invoked a clause allowing it to refuse a booking at its discretion. 

While the policy states that could be for events likely to incite violence or bad behaviour, it also gives staff room to make arbitrary decisions on any event.

Mr Alqaisi said the only reason he didn’t submit the form was because the City denied him the venue.

He’d also considered the form a mere formality after receiving the email, cited by the Voice, which told him the City was “able to accommodate you” at Rod Evans.

“If there was never a booking, why did they phone me to cancel,” Mr Alqaisi asked.

“And I wonder how they even found out about the nature of the event when the topic and the speaker had never been mentioned to them.”

Mr Alqaisi said the event was an “academic talk” unlikely to incite protests or violence, while the Palestinian Cultural Society he heads had gone no further than to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Mr Alqaisi said he and his peers viewed the venue rejections as targeted silencing.

He believes they reflect a discriminatory stance against the Palestinian community’s right to engage in academic and cultural discussions. 

“If we were not Palestinian, neither the university nor the City of Perth would be clamping down on our right to free speech and academic freedom,” he said.

“Every day, we watch in horror as our own family members appear on the news in Gaza; why must we then struggle just for the right to call for an end to our suffering?”

The Palestinian Cultural Society finally found a safe haven for Dr Prashad at the Boorloo Activist Centre, 15/5 Aberdeen Street, Perth, just near McIver Station. The event will be on Wednesday November 6 at 1pm.

by BARRY HEALY