Neo-Nazis march through Melbourne CBD in terrifying display of racism ‘recruitment'
The group of about 100 people wore face coverings and chanted as they moved through the city just after midnight.
Victoria Police responded to what it called a 'pop up protest' about 12.40am, to make sure 'public order was maintained'.
'Victoria Police respects the right to protest however there is absolutely no place for antisemitic, racist or hate-based behaviour in our society and police will not tolerate such activity.'
The march turned violent when a 26-year-old man confronted the group, and was assaulted, police said.
No arrests were made, Victoria Police said.
The group eventually walked to Flagstaff Gardens where they dispersed at about 1.25am.
Liberal Member for Caulfield David Southwick said that in the moments after the neo-Nazi march finished up, those involved attempted 'to call on more people to join their forces'.
'Sadly, Victoria has become the hate state ... we have a lawless state with these extremists running the show.
'There is no place for that, no place for what we saw last night with these Nazi protestors that are actually going on a recruitment drive.
'These extremists are gutless cowards, they cover their faces and hide their identities, and they do that because they know they're doing the wrong thing.
'I think most Victorians have had a gutful of this, they want to see a state that embraces everybody — but when you have these extremists targeting people because of their background, that's simply unacceptable.'
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'Without rule of law, you've got rule of the jungle': Looking back on a life as a war crimes prosecutor
Graham Blewitt never set out to become a pioneer in war crimes prosecution. The now-retired 78 year old, who lives in south-west Sydney, says he "got into war crimes accidentally". His first job fresh out of high school in the office of the director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales saw him embark on a career in criminal law. But leaping into the world of war crime didn't come until 1988. "I was offered a position to work with Bob Greenwood QC, who was the director of the Special Investigations Unit, set up by the Hawke Government to investigate and prosecute Nazi collaborators who are living in Australia." More than 500 suspected Nazi collaborators who had migrated to Australia after the second world war were investigated. But many had already died, others died during the course of investigations, and many allegations couldn't be substantiated due to a lack of available evidence. In the end, three people were charged under Australia's War Crimes Act 1945: Ivan Polyukhovich, Heinrich Wagner, and Mikolay Berezovsky. Polyukhovich was accused of helping massacre more than 850 Jews in the northern Ukrainian village of Serniki. "We approached it in the same way that you would investigating any criminal act. And in the cases that we prosecuted, there were three indictments brought against three Nazi collaborators all from Ukraine, and all of them involved the mass execution of the Jewish population of various villages and towns. So we undertook investigations by going to those areas, interviewing survivors, interviewing witnesses who were still there and those who had become refugees after the war. "And those witnesses told us in their view what had happened. We then went and sent forensic teams and exhumed the bodies in the mass graves from the 1940s. And that was a first. None of the other units throughout the world investigating war crimes, none of them had ever undertaken a mass grave examination, but we did all three. And the forensic evidence was just overwhelming. It corroborated the evidence of the witnesses that we had found. So powerful was the evidence that the defence, when the prosecutions were taking place, the forensic evidence was not challenged." Although none of the prosecutions resulted in convictions, Blewitt says it was an important moment in Australian legal history. It also set the foundations for Blewitt's work prosecuting war crimes during the violent ethnic conflicts that broke out in the Balkans in the early 1990s. The United Nations Security Council set up the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – the ICTY - in 1992, to investigate the many alleged atrocities occuring in the region. It was the first tribunal to investigate international war crimes after former Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg, and Japanese leaders at Tokyo, following World War Two. And Graham Blewitt, became the tribunal's deputy prosecutor. "There were daily news reports in the radio, on the TV, on newspapers reporting on crimes that were being committed. So, it was fairly obvious there were war crimes being committed. But out of the blue in 1992, I got a phone call from the United Nations in New York asking whether I would be prepared to join this commission of experts that was set up. And at the time, I was still heavily involved in the war crimes prosecutions of the Nazis here in Australia, so I couldn't walk away from that. But having been approached thereafter, I was very keen to watch what was happening in the Hague. "And I became aware that first of all that the judges had been appointed, 11 judges, but no prosecutor. And that the United Nations was having problems finding a prosecutor. When the last of the Nazi cases in Australia had finished, I contacted the United Nations, and I said well I'm now available if you think I can help. And that's when they asked me to come to the Hague to be interviewed for the job of deputy prosecutor. And I did that and was appointed and started there in February of 1994." Blewitt says when he arrived, he essentially walked into an empty prosecutor's office. The position of chief prosecutor remained vacant. And Blewitt found himself tasked with designing the office, recruiting staff and getting the ICTY's investigations off the ground. "Almost on a daily basis I was receiving reports and enquiries from the media wanting to know what's the tribunal doing when are you going to get started. And there were reports coming in daily of massacres, atrocities being committed throughout the Balkans. The tribunal could not fail because if it did, it would set back the initiatives that were taking place then to establish a permanent international criminal court. So that added extra pressure. I knew it would be a success because I knew it was possible. We were able in the Nazi war crimes work to bring to find evidence and to bring prosecutions against crimes that had been committed 50 years before. "And in a way the the work in the Balkans was easier because it was happening and the evidence was fresh. So hand-in-hand with recruiting staff, I was reading what was happening at the time and prioritising those investigations in my mind which investigations should come first because we had to select, we just couldn't investigate everything. And by the time the first prosecutor, Richard Goldstone from South Africa, who had been released from the constitutional court in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, when he started in August of 1994, I presented him with an office that was functioning, and investigations had already been started. And by November of that year, November 1994, we had already issued our first indictment." A key moment for the ICTY and Blewitt, came in July 1995. Years of war, bloodshed and displacement culminated in what would later be determined a genocide by the ICTY and the International Court of Justice. More than 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Srebrenica, a small town in the far east of Bosnia and Herzegovina. What had been designated a United Nations 'safe zone' – became the scene of the largest mass killing on European soil since World War Two. Blewitt says at the time, his desk was already piled high with reports of atrocities throughout the Balkans: mass killings of unarmed civilians, widespread detentions in concentration camps, torture, and rape. But he remembers hearing reports "something terrible" had happened in Srebrenica. "At that stage we had no idea that it was going to turn into a genocide. But we realised it was serious enough that we needed to get a team on it straight away. We also established very early in the piece that General Ratko Mladic and the president the Bosnian President Karadzic were primarily responsible for what had happened. And as our investigation went by, we were assisted greatly by the Americans who gave us aerial imagery of the mass grave sites. And very soon after the investigation started, we realised that the bodies of the victims who had been executed were being buried in graves and once the Serbs found out that we were aware of the grave sites because of the imagery, they started to remove the bodies from those graves and then took them to more remote locations and buried the bodies in secondary graves. "And as the investigations went on after months, we were able to identify both the primary grave sites and the secondary sites, and we decided to carry out exhumations of the bodies in those grave sites. And some of the staff that were involved in the Australian exhumations in Ukraine. We were able to utilise their expertise and they were involved. Painstakingly they examined the sites and by comparing soil samples, they were able to link the secondary sites with the primary sites. And all that forensic evidence became very important in the subsequent prosecutions that took place." Blewitt describes the July 1995 massacres at Srebrenica as a "clear cut" genocide. "Looking at the definition of genocide, there has to be the intent to destroy in whole or in part a political, ethnic, or religious group. Looking at Srebrenica, what the Bosnian Serbs were trying to do and and in fact did was to kill all the men and boys from Srebrenica, and there were thousands of them. So that for us clearly fell within the definition of trying to destroy in part the ethnic group of the Bosniaks. In our view met the criteria for the definition of genocide and that then led to the charge genocide being brought. And the court later, the judges at trial and in the appeals agreed that yes, there was a genocide and it was proclaimed as such." In November 1995, indictments were issued against Karadžić and Mladić, preventing them from attending peace talks in Dayton, Ohio. Critics told them the decision might interrupt the peace process - however, the ICTY prosecutors felt they had to be prosecuted and held to account. Blewitt recalls the prosecutor's office then reaching a point where dozens of public indictments had been issued, but no arrests had been made. He says the tribunal risked becoming a "toothless tiger", until there was a breakthrough in 1996 during the term of the ICTY's second chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour from Canada. "We were able to effectively force NATO, the Stabilisation Force SFOR into starting to arrest the fugitives. Once the first arrest attempt took place, it opened up the floodgates. And before we knew it, the detention centre in the Hague was full. It was necessary to build two additional courtrooms to accommodate all the accused. So once that point had been reached and trials were taking place on a daily basis in three courtrooms, the tribunal was well and truly underway. And I think it became apparent to everybody, including the international community, that the tribunal was going to succeed. And that gave confidence to those setting up the permanent international criminal court, the ICC. "And when that was established, then clearly the legacy of the tribunal had made itself clear. It had also brought a level of justice to the victims. All 161 individuals indicted by the tribunal were dealt with. Either arrested, stood trial, some were convicted, some were acquitted, some died. But at the end and particularly certainly in my point of view it was a complete and utter success. And it's a one that I'm very proud of being able to have been involved in. I left the tribunal in 2005, 2004 rather. Very optimistic that at last international criminal law was enforceable. But at this point in time today I don't hold that optimism anymore." The source of his disappointment, Blewitt says, is watching wars rage around the world while seeing some leaders undermine the institutions set up to hold the perpetrators of war crimes to account. In February, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order sanctioning the ICC, saying the court had issued "baseless warrants" against Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC's 'Situation in the State of Palestine' case says it has reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant bear criminal responsibility for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Israel denies the allegations. "What's happening today throughout the world is a complete disappointment. Seeing what's happening with the ICC. The virtual collapse of the integrity of the Security Council. And under Trump's administration imposing sanctions on the ICC members including judges doing their work. You know, it's an appalling situation. Those sort of comments bring people to not to trust the ICC. And with the Trump administration supporting Israel and Netanyahu in particular. "And we're seeing on a daily basis the atrocities that are happening in Gaza. And it's clear that there's a genocide taking place there as well. When you add all of the various incidents happening on a daily basis together, to me the only logical conclusion is that yes, the Israelis are intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza. And there's an argument in my mind that that constitutes genocide. And I would have no hesitation in bringing an indictment against the Israeli leaders for genocide and let the court decide whether it's genocide or not." The ICC case on the State of Palestine has not included the charge of genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), however is considering whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in a case brought by South Africa. Israel has repeatedly rejected genocide accusations, denying that there is the "intent", which is key for the charge of genocide. Blewitt says investigating and prosecuting alleged war crimes in Gaza today would be far more complex than it was for him. "We didn't have access to the social media and the iPhone images. We were reliant on actual witnesses. The difference with those investigating what's happening in Gaza now is that it's not possible for investigators to gain entry to Gaza on the ground. It's not possible to investigate crime scenes. To that extent, there is a difference. There's also the complication that if there's an allegation that the Israelis were in fact responsible for war crimes with the complementarity provisions of the the ICC, Israel has to be given the opportunity to demonstrate that they are investigating any atrocities themselves. "We hear daily reports that they're inquiring but how realistic they're doing I don't know, it's anybody's guess. To me, the difficulty is where do you draw the line because we see on a daily basis atrocities being committed, bombings with civilians being killed. If I was involved in the investigations, I wouldn't know where to start to be honest. The ICC has already indicted Netanyahu. But not for any particular attack. It's more denying the civilian population of food and medical supplies and other humanitarian support. But I think the investigation needs to switch to actual incidents where lots of people have been killed." However the ICC's investigations turn out - it will likely be many years before they are resolved. But Blewitt maintains the work is important. "Without the rule of law, you've got the rule of the jungle. Prosecuting people for crimes against humanity and genocide and war crimes acts as a deterrent against other world leaders wanting to achieve some political goal. If they find themselves able to have impunity for such crimes, well then they're going to continue. But if you can end impunity for such crimes, then world leaders might hesitate before proceeding with killing innocent civilians, knowing that they're likely to be brought before the ICC or some other tribunal. In my view, and it's a clear view, unless you've got that deterrent in place, you're never going to stop what's happening in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in other parts of the world." Blewitt says you can't have peace without justice, with hope the ICTY's legacy as well as his own, can be upheld.
