Nationalist activist Thomas Sewell has told a court his comments in a protest speech about hanging a Chinese man who scalded a baby with hot coffee in Brisbane were a “creative and artistic” way of advocating for capital punishment.
Mr Sewell, 32, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday to contest an offensive behaviour charge laid over a rally he led of about 35 then-members of the now-disbanded National Socialist Network outside the Chinese Consulate in Toorak in October 2024.
The protesters burned Chinese flags and posters of Chinese president Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, and the baby attacker – a 33-year-old who was able to fly out of Australia undetected following the horrific incident two months earlier – and held a banner saying “yellow grubs, hand over the baby mutilator”.
A complaint from the Chinese Consulate led to Mr Sewell, the only unmasked participant in the protest, being charged, but last week ambassador Xiao Qian suddenly announced he was sending a delegation to Queensland to look into the case.
It was the first public statement made by the Chinese government about the fugitive, who reportedly acted because he wanted “revenge on White people” after being denied another Australian visa, and has not been arrested since returning to China.
A video showing Mr Sewell’s speech during the protest was played to the court, in which he said of the baby attacker: “I will personally hang him, I will hang him from the tallest building in this country” and called Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and then-Opposition leader Peter Dutton “weak on China”.
The video played to the court:
New video shows right-wing activists protesting outside China’s consulate in Melbourne today.
They demanded the extradition of a Chinese man who scalded a White Australian baby with hot coffee in a suspected racist hate crime.
Full report: https://t.co/1gdmb9RKKQ pic.twitter.com/E8Xk8ReOsq
— The Noticer (@NoticerNews) October 26, 2024
Prosecutors allege the phrase “yellow grub” was racist and that the rally’s appearance and location combined to make Mr Sewell’s behaviour offensive, but Mr Sewell told the court he delivered a political speech that did not meet the threshold of offensiveness, the Herald Sun reported.
Magistrate Patrick Southey told the court that reasonable criticisms of China could be made, and that while the hanging comment might seem “like a Ku Klux Klan gathering” out of context, those who had been watching the news at the time may have understood the aim of the protest.
At one point he asked Mr Sewell if he was born in Australia, and when Mr Sewell replied “no, I wasn’t”, Mr Southey asked: “There’s an irony there, isn’t there?”
But Mr Sewell said in response that he was “ethnically an Anglo-Saxon”, and said that even though Rudyard Kipling was born in British India, he was still English.
“I shouldn’t have engaged. You clearly turned your mind to that little irony,” Mr Southey said.
“I don’t think it’s ironic, Your Honour,” Mr Sewell replied.
“I could have been born on the moon, I’m still Australian.”
Mr Southey also told the court it was “cowardly and despicable” for the other protesters not to show their faces, to which Mr Sewell asked if he agreed with anonymous voting, and used the example of political violence carried out by Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe.
Mr Sewell told the court his hanging remark used “artistic and creative” language to “cause a scene” and draw attention to the horrific coffee attack, and that it was not a legitimate threat to kill.
“I believe this to be political speech because it is advocation for capital punishment … I believe that there is room for impassioned speech during political protests,” he said.
He also argued that the offensive behaviour charge had “mutated” from its original intention and was now being used for political policing, and brought up a famous comment made by former immigration minister Arthur Calwell during a debate about deportations that “two Wongs don’t make a White”.
Mr Sewell was arrested on November 7, 2024, and charged with offensive behaviour over the protest, and intimidating police over separate podcast comments.
In a police interview played to the same court last year when Mr Sewell fought the police intimidation charges, he asked police why he was being charged, and not the Chinese baby attacker.
He also told the arresting officers that he and his family had guns pointed at them by police while returning from Brisbane, whereas the baby attacker was able to escape, in part because police failed to specify his ethnicity and did not appeal to Asian communities to “avoid bias”.
The matter resumes tomorrow.
Header image: Left, the protest (supplied). Right, the baby attacker (Queensland Police).
