Media Release
Palestine Action Group Canberra (PAGC) - campaigning for freedom, justice and equality in Palestine - and Canberra Palestine and Climate Justice Group (CPCJC) are appalled at the censorship of the Palestinian flag in an Indigenous art installation at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and are rallying against it at 1pm today.
The groups say censorship of artwork or any nation’s flag is unacceptable, and censorship of the Palestinian flag while the Palestinian people are enduring a genocide is particularly distasteful.
“Once censorship starts, it is the beginning of the end, because if an institution can censor, particularly on such spurious grounds, there is no logical reason why you would censor one thing and not another,” says CPCJC’s Dr Tamara Kayali Browne.
“Even if you are not passionate about the struggle for Palestinian liberation, everyone has an interest in opposing this censorship, because if this is permitted, it sets a very bad precedent and we could all be censored.
“The NGA’s justification for censorship is patently absurd, as the flag consists of a piece of cloth, and a piece of cloth cannot possibly threaten anyone’s security.”
This censorship goes against the NGA’s own stance that,
“Art is for all of us. It allows us to see the world in ways that expand our minds, provoke our ideas, ignite our imaginations. At the National Gallery we strive for cultural experiences that surprise, that disrupt convention, that deepen our understanding of the human condition and the world we live in.”
It appears the NGA needs to correct its statement to read “except for Palestine”.
The artwork is a celebration of anti-colonial struggles. It is not ethically or logically coherent to allow expression of one anti-colonial struggle and not another.
Link to Guardian article: www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/21/national-g...
