Disturbing footage has emerged of a group of white supremacists staging an early morning demonstration outside a shopping centre in Melbourne.
Police are investigating after the group gathered outside Northland Shopping Centre in Preston, north-east of Melbourne’s CBD about 3.30am on Sunday.
They were filmed dressed in black with their faces covered while chanting slogans such as ‘white man, fight back’ and ‘white pride’ while holding an offensive banner.
It came a week after a violent brawl broke out between ‘rival gangs’ armed with machetes at the shopping centre on the afternoon of May 25.
That incident prompted the Victorian government to fast-track its ban on the sale of machetes to immediately take effect instead of September.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan described Sunday night’s demonstration as ‘hateful’ and ‘extremist’ and said it had ‘no place’ in Victoria.
‘This is disgusting behaviour by a group of cowards who seek to do nothing more than intimidate and spread hatred – we will not stand for it’, she told Guardian .
Speaker and advocate Jeff Kissubi posted an image of the demonstration to Instagram, claiming there were ‘no police in sight’ and ‘no immediate dispersal’.
Victoria Police confirmed they were investigating an incident involving an ‘offensive banner’ outside a Preston shopping centre.
‘There is absolutely no place for antisemitic, racist or hate-based behaviour in our society and police will not tolerate such activity,’ a spokesperson told Daily Mail .
Shopping centre management condemned the demonstration.
‘We understand that a group briefly gathered outside the closed centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, well outside trading hours. Security informed police immediately,’ a Vicinity Centres spokesperson by National Indigenous Times.
‘Vicinity strongly condemns any behaviour that incites division or violence within our community. Such actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.’
Police have so far arrested and charged seven males over the May 25 brawl that forced terrified shoppers to bunker down in locked down stores or run for their lives.
It prompted Premier Allan to bring forward a ban on the sale of machetes to take effect immediately.
The laws, which the government described as the toughest of their kind in n history, were introduced to tackle a wave of violent knife crime across the state.
‘In Victoria, community safety comes first. We must never let places we meet become places we fear,’ Allan said
‘I hate these knives, and I will keep introducing as many laws as it takes to get them off our streets, out of our shops and out of our lives.’
The government also recently passed stricter hate speech laws to crack down on those who ‘whip up hate and fear against Victorians because of who they are’.
‘Now we are unmasking Nazis through our protest laws, and we are making it impossible for them to function by putting their vilifying threats and incitements in the Crimes Act — where they belong,’ Allan said.
Anyone with information about Sunday morning’s incident are urged to contact Crime Stoppers.