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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 No. 3. 15th March 1972

[Introduction]

Court action against at least one Police officer is intended following last weekend's demonstration at Washdyke and Mt. John.

One demonstrator had his jaw fractured and lost two teeth when he was allegedly kicked in the face by a police dog handler. Several demonstrators suffered bites from police dogs and one was bitten on his cock, another in his stomach, and many others had their clothing ripped or suffered minor bites to the legs or arms.

In addition several demonstrators were hurt, some quite seriously when they jumped over bluffs on Mt. John to avoid being bitten by the dogs.

It began peacefully enough on Saturday, March 11, when about 300 demonstrators, mostly young and students gathered from all over New Zealand at the Post Office in Timaru, on the East Coast of the South Island, They marched from there along the waterfront to Caroline Bay, a distance of about one mile.

From Caroline Bay the demonstrators moved out of town to Washdyke, about 3 miles to the north the site of the logistic end supply base for the Mt. John installation. The building, with a sign in front of it describing it as part of the U.S. Aerospace Defence Command was thoroughly defended by Police and the demonstration stopped there only long enough to hear a short speech by U.S. base expert Owen Wilkes. Owen spoke of the PX store and U.S. Post Office, the one-day ration packs and the 12 U.S.A.F. officers who occupy the building. Ha linked it with the U.S. military bases at Harewood and Mt. John.