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Police have seized art posters from a Canberra music venue and bar that depict world leaders and others, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, wearing Nazi uniforms, and are investigating whether new federal hate symbol laws were broken.
David Howe, owner of Dissent Cafe in Canberra’s CBD, said his venue was shut down for around two hours on Wednesday night as police investigated a complaint about hate imagery relating to five posters in the window.
“I think it’s ludicrous to be perfectly honest,” he told Guardian Australia, describing the works as an “anti-fascist statement” and noting the shut down had caused the cancellation of an interstate band’s performance.
The posters, by protest artist group Grow Up Art, depicted various world leaders including Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump in Nazi uniforms.
In a statement, ACT policing confirmed it had declared the cafe a crime scene. The five posters were seized and would be investigated to determine whether charges would be laid under hate symbols laws, it said.
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“ACT Policing remains committed to ensuring that alleged antisemitic, racist and hate incidents are addressed promptly and thoroughly and when possible criminality is identified, ACT Policing will not hesitate to take appropriate action,” the statement said.
Guardian Australia understands it is the first complaint about alleged hate imagery received in the nation’s capital following laws passed earlier this year in the wake of the Bondi shooting.
About 20 people had gathered at the venue at about 7.15pm when three police officers showed up, Howe said.
“I was, at first, quite shocked. I mean, I couldn’t quite believe that they were … these are artistic works,” he said.
“No one was to touch the posters until they’d been removed by the police.”
The police statement said they “had a discussion with the owner, with officers seeking to remove the posters as part of their investigation into the matter”, but the owner declined, leading police to declare the venue a crime scene.
Howe disputed this claim: “If they had specifically asked me to remove the posters, I would have simply taken the posters down.”
Howe was told to wait for a serious crimes unit to arrive from Gungahlin, around a 25-minute drive, to remove the posters.
Under laws passed in January, hate symbol display offences don’t apply if it’s deemed for a religious, academic, educational, artistic, literary or scientific purpose and contrary to the public interest.
“[The posters] are an anti-fascist statement. It speaks to authoritarian regimes around the world. Police states are just symptomatic of that,” Howe said.
The ACT senator David Pocock said art is a “legitimate form of political dissent” and it was important police protected against hate and prohibited symbols while also “permitting peaceful protest”.
The ACT independent MLA Thomas Emerson said he’d written to the ACT police minister on Thursday morning to ask why the legislation’s exemptions for artistic purposes hadn’t been applied in this instance.
“This seems pretty Orwellian to me,” Emerson said.
“In attempting to foster social harmony by preventing offence, we can’t afford to create more division. Government suppression of artistic expression and dissenting voices is incredibly divisive.”
Guardian Australia has contacted the ACT police minister for a response.
