SYDNEY, Australia — New regulations making it a crime to annoy or inconvenience people gathering in Sydney during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit later this month were criticized Tuesday as a heavy-handed blow to free speech. The laws will apply in dozens of areas of downtown Sydney — including the city’s landmark opera house, train stations and city parks — that are designated venues for World Youth Day, a Catholic evangelical festival at which the pontiff will conduct mass and lead prayer meetings.
The regulations give police and emergency services workers power to order anyone to stop behavior that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event,” according to a New South Wales state government gazette. Anyone who does not comply faces a 5,500 Australian dollar (US$5,300) fine. Anna Katzman, the president of the New South Wales Bar Association, which represents almost 3,000 lawyers in the state, said making someone’s inconvenience the basis of a criminal offense was “unnecessary and repugnant.”
“If I was to wear a T-shirt proclaiming that ‘World Youth Day is a waste of public money’ and refuse to remove it when an officer … asks me to, I would commit a criminal offense,” Katzman said. “How ridiculous is that?” Lee Rhiannon, a state lawmaker with the left-leaning Greens party, said the definition of what was annoying was open to interpretation and the penalties in the new regulations were too severe.
Cripes, if I were a cop, I’d be arresting people all damn day! Off my lawn!!!
