Nude protester tells court she was ‘fed up’ when she stripped off
A nude Invasion Day protester from Sydney’s eastern suburbs who has been convicted of resisting police arrest wants hundreds of people to strip down and rally together, saying: “naked truth is powerful.”
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A Sydney woman who has been sentenced for stripping down at an Invasion Day rally says: “naked truth is powerful.”
Eastern suburbs woman Christina Leung joined tens of thousands of protesters who marched from Hyde Park through the city this year as part of national action organised by indigenous groups calling for the date of Australia Day to be changed.
As temperatures soared above 30 degrees, Leung shocked onlookers at Yabun Festival in Victoria Park by getting nude and standing in the packed crowd wearing nothing but her socks.
“I’ve been wanting to rip my clothes off in protest since the fires, and I guess I chose that day because it’s symbolically one I’m against and felt deep grief for,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“There are so many things that I could be standing up against, but on that day it was just really hot and I was fed up.”
Leung said this year the rally’s focus had broadened to climate change amid the bushfire crisis, with a push for governments to hand over land and implement traditional Aboriginal land management strategies.
Last week the 38-year-old pleaded guilty to three charges at Downing Centre Local Court.
She was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order for resisting arrest, fined $500 for obscene exposure and was spared a conviction for failing to obey police directions.
Leung said she wanted to show solidarity with indigenous Australians who consider January 26 a day of mourning, adding: “I feel the plight of the first nations people.”
But when police confronted the Bellevue Hill woman for removing her clothes she became distressed, at one point draping a scarf over her head.
Leung, who set up traditional teahouse Zensation in Waterloo with her father Raymond, had to be pulled by several officers into a paddy wagon on Broadway.
“They totally flipped out, because the truth is powerful. Naked truth is powerful,” she said.
“Maybe a naked body cuts through all the bulls***. If we could organise one en masse it would finally make people pay attention.”
Leung was later released on bail on the condition she not be nude in any public place and not return to the Yabun Festival.
Last November Sydney’s Inner West Council cancelled its Australia Day events as a sign of respect for First Nations people.
“For Aboriginal people, the date represents the beginning of colonisation, dispossession, the removal of children and deliberate destruction of language and culture,” mayor Darcy Byrne said at the time.
