'Trespass'
What follows is the text for TRESPASS: a 20th anniversary photographic exhibition of the 1988 Salamanca Market arrests
TRESPASS is an initiative of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group with the support of the Gay and Lesbian Community Centre and the Hobart City Council GLBTI Community Liaison Committee.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Hobart City Council, curated by Roger Lovell, and will be officially opened by former arrestee, Richard Hale, at 5pm on Wednesday December 10th.
The organisers would like to thank the Mercury newspaper, Doug McGregor and Roger Lovell for permission to use their images.
The majority of photographs in the exhibition were donated to the TGLRG. If you know or are one of the photographers, or if you have any photographs or memorabilia associated with the Salamanca arrests, please contact Roger Lovell 0419 202 548.
All historical information and direct quotes in this exhibition leaflet are from Pink Triangle: the gay law reform debate in Tasmania, by Miranda Morris (UNSW Press, 1994).
‘It is quite right for there to be one law for heterosexuals and one law for homosexuals.’
At the end of 1988, the normally peaceful and friendly Salamanca Market was the unlikely scene of protests and arrests sparked by the banning of a gay law reform stall by the Hobart City Council.
A nation celebrating its bicentenary was amazed by news reports of ordinary citizens bundled into police vans when they refused to leave the Market, and of Council officials declaring discrimination to be ‘right’.
A few months earlier, the Tasmanian Gay Law Reform Group was established to campaign for the repeal of laws which criminalised sex between men with a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison.
This punishment was the most severe in Australia and reflected an official hostility to homosexuality that subsequently saw Tasmania labelled ‘Bigot’s Island’ in the world press.
To challenge that hostility, the newly-formed Gay Law Reform Group set up a Salamanca Market stall to gather petition signatures and distribute information about the importance of law reform.
But the Hobart City Council moved quickly to ban the stall, deeming it ‘offensive’, ‘political’ and unfit for ‘a family market’, even though there were many other stalls with political messages and some selling sexually explicit material.
When members of the Group stood up to the discriminatory ruling, the Council directed the Tasmania Police to arrest them for trespass.
So began the largest act of gay rights civil disobedience in Australian history.
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‘The worst thing was that they took all my property away from me…you know, ring, watch, glasses and shoelaces. Then they locked us up in the cells upstairs. The cell had a toilet without a seat, and a mattress covered with dried vomit. It was pretty horrible, and frightening because you didn’t know how long you were going to be there.’
Over seven weeks more than a hundred people were arrested at Salamanca Market in defence of equal rights for gay and lesbian Tasmanians, and fundamental human rights like freedom of speech.
The Council and the Police responded to this defiance with increasingly repressive measures.
The Council directed the Police to arrest to anyone known to be homosexual, or in possession of a gay law reform petition, or displaying the words ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or the pink triangle*.
It also imposed life-time Market bans on members of the Gay Law Reform Group and sought to have protesters gaoled if they returned to the Market after being arrested.
The Police wore rubber gloves to process those arrested, kept some arrestees for long periods in police cells, and threatened gay rights advocates with arrest when they left their homes on the morning of the Market.
In response there was a local and national outcry. The Council’s actions were condemned by the Hobart Mercury, some politicians and the Human Rights Commission. For a while a t-shirt declaring ‘Salamanca Place of Oppression’ became a trendy Hobart fashion item.
At Salamanca itself, weekly protests swelled to the point where hundreds of protesters sang and waved placards from the Market’s grassy verges as more and more human rights defenders stood up to face arrest.
*The pink triangle was used to designate homosexual prisoners in Nazi concentration camps and has since become the international symbol for the movement for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender human rights.
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‘The ban did wonders for the gay and lesbian community, in terms of bringing us together and out.’
On December 9th1988, the day before the 40th International Human Rights Day, the Council finally backed down and allowed the gay law reform stall.
In subsequent weeks it was revealed that the trespass charges were legally unsound and they were dropped.
This vindication of human rights was not only a victory for those involved.
The Salamanca arrests were a kind of coming out for the Tasmanian gay and lesbian community. They also set the scene for the divisive debate about gay law reform which culminated with the repeal of Tasmania’s former laws against gay sex in 1997.
Tasmania now has some of the best anti-discrimination and same-sex relationship laws in the world.
Community attitudes have also improved markedly to the point where the kind of open hostility seen at Salamanca is no longer acceptable.
Throughout that time the gay law reform stall has been a regular and much-valued feature of Salamanca Market, continuing to gather petition signatures and distribute information about the need for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender human rights.
In recognition of Tasmania’s transformation, the Hobart City Council recently resolved to make amends for its actions in 1988.
It has sponsored this exhibition, committed funds for a commemorative public art work, and, at a Civic Reception on December 10th - the 60th International Human Rights Day, the Council will apologise.
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‘One of the supporters in the crowd was an elderly man who had lived in Europe during the war years. He reminded us to learn from history and spoke out against the dangers of letting the Council do this – because there were other people in the crowd saying things like “Oh send them to Macquarie Island” – and he was standing up saying “look I have seen the concentration camps”.’
Today it is hard to imagine the events of 1988 occurring again.
But the fundamental human rights which were violated 20 years ago are still not protected by Tasmania or Australian law.
Unlike every other western society, we have no charter of democratic rights and freedoms.
If you believe that no-one should be discriminated against, banned or arrested because of their opinion, please write to your local Member of Parliament supporting a charter of human rights.
Tell them that the arrests at Salamanca Market should never be allowed to happen again.
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For more on a Tasmanian Charter of Rights visit,
www.law.utas.edu.au/reform
For more on the national human rights consultation visit,
www.humanrightsact.com.au
For more on the human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Tasmanians visit,
www.tglrg.org