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"They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening"

Posted by Oread Daily

16 February 2004 - Following a weekend uprising in the Redfern section of Sydney Australia, the premier of New South Wales has said three inquiries will be conducted into the cause of the outburst. It shouldn’t be all that tough to figure out. But then when you consider what else Premier Bob Carr had to say, you can figure that he is just one more part of the problem. "I've got full confidence in the way police tackled this incident ... we have full confidence in the police and they have our full backing," Mr Carr said.

Aboriginal Senator Aden Ridgeway says the Government has failed to recognize the need for a broad judicial inquiry into Aboriginal-police relations and that the three separate investigations will not go deep enough. "In that particular case, I think that it really is indicative of the poor relationship that exists between the Redfern Aboriginal community and the local police service," he said.

Anyway, an uneasy calm has now returned to the Aboriginal ghetto which had been the scene of running battles between police and Aboriginal youth who took to the streets after one of their own was impaled on a fence during a “police chase.”

Seventeen year old Thomas Hickey died at Sydney Children’s Hospital of chest, neck and internal injuries.

As the uprising in the community began to simmer flyers were handed out with a picture of police and reading: "Wanted: child murderers. There is a gang of child killers operating in the Redfern area. They can be easily identified as they all dress the same."

Police held a press conference to deny officers were pursuing Thomas at the time of the accident but a myriad of witnesses said otherwise. "It all started over the coppers chasing a young boy," said one local resident. He was murdered," she said. Redfern Aboriginal elder Lyall Munro says police harass local young people on a daily basis and have them running scared. "The community here is very much aware of what happened," Mr Munro said. "This type of thing is going to happen and our young people are going to die in this way whilst ever the police are allowed to get away with it." Munro told the meeting that young people are a constant target for police on patrol in Aboriginal communities. "We have a current case under investigation in Dubbo where a young man was chased and was found dead in the river, we have situations like that all over Australia," he said. "We've seen all the yahoo about reconciliation, there is no such thing as reconciliation."

Munro warned Redfern could become the next Brixton, the scene of violent race riots in the UK. "If Palestinian kids can fight ... war tanks with sling shots, our kids can do the same," he said.

"It's got to stop, the way they treat our kids. They treat our kids like dogs ... they manhandle them." Thomas’s mother said.

Thomas's aunt, Virginia, said: "If you're black and see a police car, you just run.” A local resident who preferred to be identified only as Tammie said, "We've got to let our frustrations out and that's the only way we see fit to. They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening. Aboriginal people are peaceful people but (if) they push our buttons, mate we will go to the point where if they're going to shed blood so will we."

Australia’s criminal justice system remains heavily weighted against Aboriginal people. Way back in 1996 a delegation from
Amnesty International found that indigenous Australians run a disproportionately high risk of arrest, detention and death in custody. A pattern of ill-treatment and arbitrary arrests occurs against a backdrop of systematic discrimination against Aborigines.

AI said that the way the criminal justice and penal systems function makes Aborigines particularly vulnerable to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody is also due to the dramatically disproportionate representation of Aboriginal people in detention.

Nationally, the imprisonment rate for Indigenous adults in December 2002 was 16 times that for non-Indigenous adults. This ratio was higher in Western Australia and South Australia with Indigenous rates of imprisonment 20 and 18 times the non-Indigenous rates. The proportion of prisoners who were Indigenous rose from 14% in 1992 to 20% in 2002. Indigenous youth aged 10 to 17 were in juvenile detention at a rate 17 times higher than non-Indigenous juveniles. Indigenous people are now less likely to die in police custody than 20 years ago but more likely to die in prison custody. From 1980-1989, 67 Indigenous people died in police custody and 39 in prison custody. From 1990-1999, 21 Indigenous people died in police custody and 93 in prison custody.

But, of course, it is not only the criminal justice system which is the problem. There are clear disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians across all indicators of quality of life.

• Indigenous Australians experience the lowest standards of health, education, employment and housing, as well.
• Death rates among Aborigines aged between 25 and 54 are up to five times higher than the rest of the population.
• According to figures for 2001, the average life expectancy of an indigenous male in Australia is 56 years, while for all Australian males it is 77 years.
• The life expectancy of an indigenous female is 63 years and for all Australian females it is 82 years.
• 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.
• 17% of Indigenous people over 15 reported their highest level of education as Year 12 or equivalent compared with 39% of non-Indigenous people.
• The unemployment rate was 23.0% for Indigenous adults compared with 7.4% for non-Indigenous adults.
• The average weekly income for Indigenous people aged 15 and over ($231) was only 60% of that for non-Indigenous people in the same age group ($387).
• 17.8% of Indigenous households were overcrowded by accepted Australian standards, compared with 3.8% of other Australian households.

It don’t take three commissions to figure out what the problem is, mates.

Sources: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (Australia), Amnesty International, Institute of Race Relations, AAP,Daily Telegraph (Australia), Australia Broadcasting Corporation, Scoop, Times, Sydney Herald

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Further information: redfern riots