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Aborigines' Protest in Sydney Leaves 40 Injured

By The Associated Press

17 February 2004 - SYDNEY, Australia - Rioters set fire to a train station and pelted police officers with gasoline bombs in an Aborigine neighborhood here during a nine-hour street battle on Monday that began after a teenager died, reportedly while being chased by officers.

The rioting in the district, Redfern, left 40 officers injured and highlighted continuing tensions between Aborigines and the authorities.

The unrest followed the death of a 17-year-old Aborigine, Thomas Hickey, who was impaled on a fence when he fell from his bicycle. His mother said officers were chasing the youth, which the police deny.

Hundreds of officers in riot gear doused protesters with high-pressure water hoses during the fighting. The hospitalized officers mostly suffered broken bones. There was no immediate word on injuries to rioters.

Four people were arrested and charged with involvement in the fighting. More arrests are expected.

Premier Bob Carr of New South Wales ordered an investigation and said the state coroner would look into Mr. Hickey's death and any possible police involvement.

In the rioting, about 100 attackers set fire to Redfern railway station and to a car, and smashed windows. "They burned out one vehicle and they in fact were throwing Molotov cocktails both at police and at Redfern railway station during the course of the riot," the assistant police commissioner, Bob Waites, said.

An Aborigine leader, Lyall Munro, said anger had been simmering long before Mr. Hickey's death.

"These young people are very, very upset about what happened to this young man, and they're very upset about what's happening to their young friends on a continual basis," he said in an interview on a Sydney radio station, 2UE. "It was a preventable death, like most of the deaths of young Aboriginal people today."

Mr. Munro accused the police of harassing people who live in a squalid grid of near-derelict houses known as the Block. "This is an everyday occurrence, the harassment and intimidation of our young people," he said.

Aborigines make up 400,000 of Australia's 20 million people. The houses in the Block were bought for Aborigines in the 1970's by the federal government in an attempt to alleviate homelessness and other social problems among them.

The New York Times

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Uroligheder i Sydney

16. februar 2004 - En ghetto-forstad til Sydney var i nat ramme om de værste uroligheder i ti år. En gruppe af Australiens oprindelige befolkning, Aboriginals, kastede sten og molotovcocktails mod politiet.

Optøjerne blev udløst af en 17-årigs død. Drengen blev spiddet på et metalhegn i lørdags og døde søndag af sine kvæstelser. Drengens familie og venner mener, at han blev jagtet af politiet. Politiet siger, at de kørte forbi ham, og at han væltede på sin cykel.

Dårligt forhold
Fem mennesker blev anholdt under urolighederne som sendte 40 politifolk på skadestuen.

Forholdet mellem områdets Aboriginals og politiet beskrives som dårligt.

Aboriginals er Australiens dårligst stillede befolkningsgruppe. Gennemsnitslevetiden er 20 år lavere end hos andre australiere, og antallet af Aboriginals der sidder i fængsel, er arbejdsløse, på socialhjælp eller udsættes for vold i hjemmet er langt højere end hos andre australiere.

DR Nyheder (Denmark)

Australia's simmering racial tensions

February 16, 2004 - SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A young Aborigine dies. His family and friends bitterly blame police and within hours gasoline bombs and rocks rain down on a Sydney ghetto. Cars and a train station are torched.

Australians like to think of their society as fair and egalitarian. But a riot in the neighborhood of Redfern in Sydney has dramatically highlighted problems of race that have haunted this country ever since the first white settlers arrived more than two centuries ago.

Forty officers were wounded, eight of them hospitalized, in a nine-hour street battle with a mainly Aboriginal mob Sunday night and Monday morning in and around a slum known as "The Block" -- a grid of near-derelict houses not far from Sydney's center. It's not clear how many protesters were hurt. (Full story)

The trouble started when Thomas Hickey, a 17-year-old Aborigine, fell off his bicycle and impaled himself on a fence on Saturday. He died in a hospital Sunday amid allegations that he had been chased by a police patrol -- a claim denied by officers.

Aboriginal leaders mourned the teen but said the reasons for the riot went deeper than the cause of Hickey's death.

"People should not kid themselves; this is Australia and last night's display of violence is an extreme example of the extent of the alienation felt by some Aboriginal kids," said Sen. Aden Ridgeway, the only Aborigine serving in federal Parliament.

Ironically, Aboriginal heritage and culture is a multimillion dollar industry in Australia. Tourists buy thousands of mass produced boomerangs and traditional paintings each year -- many of them in stores just a few kilometers (miles) from the scene of Sunday night's riots.

But most of the money generated goes to non-Aboriginal businesses. Few visitors see the crisis in housing and health care that is crippling indigenous communities and fueling the sort of resentment that exploded Sunday.

Third World problems
Chased from their lands by European settlers when the first colonization of Australia began in 1788, Aborigines have lived uneasily alongside the rest of the population ever since.

Repeated and costly government policy failures have turned Aborigines into a community with Third World health problems cast adrift in one of the Western world's wealthiest societies.

Aborigines now number 400,000 in the 20 million population. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said in 2002 that Aboriginal men have a life expectancy of just 56 years -- 21 years less than the national average. Aboriginal women's life expectancy is 63 years -- 20 years less than other Australian women.

Aboriginals are 10 times more likely to suffer blindness than other Australians, mainly as a result of trachoma, a bacterial infection eradicated in most of the developed world.

Discounting government employment projects, unemployment among Aborigines runs at about 40 percent, according to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, (ATSIC) an elected body that distributes about 1 billion Australian dollars (U.S.$780 million) in government funding each year.

Unemployment is partly blamed for Aborigines making up nearly 20 percent of the nation's prison population despite numbering only 2 percent of the nation's people.

Alcoholism and drug abuse are major scourges.

Apologies
Relations under the current conservative administration of Prime Minister John Howard have been strained by Howard's refusal to apologize for past governments' mistreatment of Aborigines.

Aboriginal leaders have long demanded the government apologize for past mistakes. For decades, authorities took many children away from their Aboriginal parents -- often by force -- in a now discredited attempt to assimilate them into mainstream society, creating the so-called "Stolen Generations" of thousands of Aborigines with a grudge against the government.

Although only a few hundred Aborigines live in and around The Block in Redfern, it is one of the highest profile symbols of Aboriginal inequality.

Much of this is due to its prime location, just one railway stop from Sydney's Central Station. Nearby upscale neighborhoods have been gentrified while The Block has crumbled into a garbage-strewn slum.

The state government and the area's Aboriginal owners are redeveloping the site, but social problems persist.

Clashes between police and Aborigines often erupt in small towns around the country, but they get little coverage in this vast nation where media outlets are concentrated in major towns and cities.

Aborigines in the northern town of Katherine protested last week after a police squad car ran over an indigenous man sleeping in a driveway. The death, which police said was an accident, came just days after Aboriginal dancers and painters had met travelers -- the vast majority of them white -- on a new tourist train that travels through the Outback between the north and south coasts.

Officials have promised to hold an inquiry into Sydney's riot. But don't expect a legacy of distrust to dissipate anytime soon.

New South Wales state opposition leader John Brogden -- a senior member of Howard's Liberal Party -- said the only way to clean up The Block was to knock it down.

"I'd bring the bulldozers in because I think allowing this to happen every couple of years, which is what's going to happen, will never fix the problem," he said.

CNN

Sydney riots over Aborigine death

16 Feb, 2004 - More than 40 police officers have been injured in Sydney in a riot sparked by the death of an Aboriginal teenager.

Angry youths torched a railway station and pelted police with petrol bombs and lumps of concrete in the mainly Aborigine district of Redfern.

Thomas Hickey, 17, died after he was impaled on a metal fence when he fell off his bike. Police deny claims he was being chased by officers at the time.

There are to be three inquiries into the boy's death and the riot.

Four people have been arrested and charged over the riot, which lasted for nine hours. Police say they expect more arrests to follow.

The BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney says this was the worst night of violence in Sydney for years, and will be a setback for race relations.

New South Wales State Premier Bob Carr said his government would launch inquiries into the incident to establish how the teenager died and whether there was any police involvement.

The riot broke out on Sunday night and continued into the early hours of Monday.

Police reinforcements wearing riot gear were drafted in from across Sydney to quell the violence.

Eight of the injured officers had to go to hospital.

"At this stage one officer was knocked out by a brick that was thrown through the air and a number of others have got broken limbs, legs," Assistant Commissioner Bob Waites told reporters.

At the height of the riots, some 100 people were said to have taken to the streets.

"They burnt out one vehicle and they in fact were throwing Molotov cocktails both at police and at Redfern railway station during the course of the riot," said Mr Waites.

Thomas Hickey's mother said her son was being pursued by police when he fell of his bike and became impaled on a metal fence.

The allegation is strongly denied by the police.

A local resident, identified only as Donna, told ABC radio that people were angry because they believed the police were responsible for the teenager's death.

"He was murdered. We've been down to look at the spot and everything and there's no sign, they cleaned it up that quick," she said.

One local community leader accused the police of harassing people who live in a rundown area of housing known as The Block.

"You could interview every Aboriginal kid down there that comes from The Block, and the majority will tell you to your face... that they've all been bashed by the police," said Lyall Munro.

The area is notorious for drug dealing, with heroin being sold openly in a local park.

Source: BBC           VIDEO

Sydney police investigate Aboriginal death

BY AFP IN SYDNEY

February 16, 2004 - Australian authorities launched twin inquiries today into the death of an Aboriginal teenager at the weekend and subsequent rioting that left more than 40 police officers injured yesterday.

A railway station in the inner city suburb of Redfern, home to much of Sydney’s Aboriginal community, was set ablaze, two cars were burnt out and windows were smashed as 150 drunken youths went on the rampage Sunday.

Eight police were hospitalised, some with broken limbs, after coming under a hail of flying rocks, bricks and petrol bombs in what police described as the worst riots ever seen in the trouble-plagued suburb.

The violence followed a day of racial tension triggered by the death of Thomas Hickey, 17, on Sunday, a day after he was impaled on a metal fence after falling from his bicycle.

His family alleged the accident happened because he was being chased by police, a claim strenuously denied by officers.

Local residents and Aboriginal leaders spoke of what they described as ongoing police brutality, harassment and intimidation.

Bob Carr, Premier of New South Wales, sent his condolences to Hickey’s family and said his Government would launch separate inquiries to establish how the teenager died and what involvement, if any, police had in his death.

The police critical incident team was also ordered to undertake an investigation overseen by the Ombudsman.

But Carr added:"I’ve got full confidence in the way police tackled this incident... they have our full backing."

Police in riot gear at first tried to negotiate with angry youths in a three-hour standoff after posters went up around Redfern and leaflets were distributed branding police "child murderers" and accusing them of harassment.

But the riot flared after midnight and reinforcements had to be brought in from stations across Sydney to help restore order. High pressure water hoses were used and several riot shields were shattered as they were struck by a heavy barrage of missiles.

Firemen trying to extinguish the railway station blaze were also pelted with missiles.

Five people were arrested, three of whom were later released and two were refused bail when they appeared before a magistrate. More arrests were likely, police said.

Eight large wheeled dustbins were found containing broken paving stones, bricks and beer bottles which police said the youths were using as missiles.

Assistant Commissioner Bob Waites blamed misinformation and intoxication for the riot."As far as we know, what sparked it was just the fact that there was some misinformation in the community," he told reporters.

He said police had no interest in the youth, who rose past them on his pushbike, accelerated and then lost control of the bike.

A large quantity of alcohol had been consumed by the rioters, he said, adding: "As the day went on they got more and more angry and focused their anger on police."

The riot was the latest eruption in a community plagued for years with violence, crime, poverty and neglect. Redfern has been home for decades to several hundred families of Aborigines mostly living on social welfare benefits.

Despite the efforts of successive governments over many decades, Australia’s 400,000 Aborigines have by far the highest rates of crime, suicide and alcoholism and a much lower life expectancy than the other 20 million Australians.

On the spot: the Sydney Aboriginal riots

A serious riot broke out last night in the Sydney suburb of Redfern between the local Aboriginal population and police. Roger Maynard reports on a confrontation which again highlights Australia's most enduring social problem.

What sparked the riot?

The death of Thomas Hickey, a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy. He was impaled on railings after falling off his bicycle on Sunday. The local community, including Thomas's mother, insist that the police were chasing the teenager when he lost control of his bike and died. A warrant had recently been issued for his arrest after his failure to appear in court over assault claims.

The police say that they were not chasing the teenager when he died. They claim that officers were driving in the opposite direction when the youth accelerated on his pushbike and lost control.

They maintain that they were pursuing someone else involved in a robbery and knew what happened only when they came around the block again and people flagged them down.

What happened at the riot?

It involved about 40 or 50 Aboriginal young men who clashed with the New South Wales police for several hours starting at about 9pm local time on Sunday evening. It was fuelled by the hot weather and liberal quantities of beer.

The demonstrators started pelting police with paving stones, bottles and bricks. Police who were clearly lacking in numbers and riot gear took several hours to contain the situation. They had to call in reinforcements, who arrested four of the ringleaders.

Firemen who attempted to extinguish flames were pelted with missiles. Bob Waites, the Assistant Police Commissioner, said the angry mob appeared to have an endless supply of ammunition.

It was not until after a couple of hours that they managed to get the situation under control by which time 50 police officers had been injured, many quite badly. Several had broken limbs including legs and arms, and others had head injuries. Many had to be taken to hospital.

Daylight exposed the full extent of the riot with burnt-out cars, smashed windows and debris littering the scene. The local railway station in Redfern was burnt out.

What now?

Bob Carr, the Premier of New South Wales, has appealed for calm in the area. He has opened three inquiries: an inquest and police investigation into the death of Thomas Hickey and an investigation by the Ombudsman of New South Wales into the causes of the riot. It will be some time before we can establish what exactly happened to Thomas.

What are police-local relations like?

There is a perception among the Aboriginal community in Redfern that many of the officers who work in the area have racist inclinations. This perception was fuelled by the incident over the weekend. This is not like the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, but Aboriginal leaders are saying that a Brixton-type situation could develop because of the mistrust.

What is life like for the average Aboriginal?

The riot highlights the underlying malaise among Aborigines in Australian society. They are a very disadvantaged group. Many of them are dependent on welfare, with unemployment and alcoholism rife. Death rates among Aborigines aged between 25 and 54 are up to five times higher than the rest of the population.

While most white Australians can expect to live to at least 77, male Aborigines are likely to die by the age of 56. Alcohol abuse and poor diet are key factors. Aboriginal infant mortality rates are about twice as high as white Australian babies.

Recent figures showed that only 61 out of 44,144 medical practitioners in Australia were Aborigines. Only 14 out of 6,925 psychologists and just 58 out of 15,666 solicitors were indigenous.

Successive governments have tried to throw money at the problem, but with not a great deal of success. The problems date back to the first settlements of whites in Australia near the end of the 18th century.

There are communities in northern Australia who have a very simple lifestyle in the Outback which hearkens back to those days. The majority, however, live in cities and towns and find that they cannot assimilate into modern Australia.

The Times (UK)

Riots in Sydney

By: Heli Sivunen

16-Feb-2004 - In Australia, police and aborigines have clashed in street battles in a Sydney suburb after the death of a teenager.

The riots broke out after locals blamed police for an accident that killed the boy. Heli Sivunen reports.

The nine-hour street battle was one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in Sydney in a decade.

About 100 Aborigines clashed with 200 riot police in a poor inner-city suburb.

The rioters armed themselves with bricks, bottles and fireworks, hurling them at police. 40 officers were injured, many of them suffering broken limbs.

Protesters also set fire to the local railway station, forcing train drivers to speed past.

Tensions rose after 17-year-old Thomas Hickey fell from his bicycle on Saturday. He was impaled on a metal fence and died from his injuries.

The boy's relatives said police were chasing him. Police say they merely drove past him in a car: "The reality of it is that the police were patrolling. When the young lad went past them they continued with their patrol but he for some reason accelerated on his push bike and lost control of the bike."

This small ghetto in Redfern, a suburb just a few miles from central Sydney is known as 'the Block'. It is a no-go area for whites, and it has seen tensions between Aborigines and the police before. But locals say now relations are at an all-time low.

One local resident said: "Every black child is frightened of the police, as soon as they see them they just chase them for no reason."

Aboriginal leaders said the riot was was an extreme example of racial tensions in Australia. Aborigines make up 2 per cent of Australia's population and they are the country's most disadvantaged group.

The average Aboriginal dies twenty years younger than other Australians and the rates of imprisonment, unemployment and alcoholism are much higher.

In Redfern, police reinforcements have been called in to avoid a another violent confrontation. But a bigger task than cleaning up the mess left behind, is mending relations between locals and the police.

Channel Four News (UK)

Dead boy sparks race riots

By Gary O'Shea

The death of a teenage boy triggered race riots in an Aborigine ghetto in Australia yesterday.

Protesters battled cops, claiming they chased Thomas Hickey to his death.

Around 100 youngsters lobbed petrol bombs, bricks and beer bottles in the Aboriginal neighbourhood of Redfern in Sydney.

The rail station and a car were torched and windows smashed in the nine-hour clashes.

Forty officers in riot gear were hurt, mainly suffering broken bones, before they quelled the crowds with water cannons.

Four suspects were later charged and police warned more arrests would follow.

Chiefs denied they were pursuing 17-year-old Aborigine Thomas when he fell from his bike and became fatally impaled on a fence. But his mum Gail claimed cops regularly harassed local youngsters.

She said: “It’s got to stop. They treat our kids like dogs.”

Community leader Lyall Munro added: “It was a preventable death like most deaths of young Aborigines.”

Inquiries into the riot and death are under way.

Source: The Sun (UK)

Further information: redfern riots