[Onthebarricades] Social cleansing resisted in Northern Ireland, Spain and Australia

[Andy]

[This is the way to deal with "anti-social behaviour" crackdowns.]

*  BRITISH-OCCUPIED IRELAND:  Crackdown patrol targeted in youth unrest
*  SPAIN:  Shanty-town residents resist police eviction and demolition
*  AUSTRALIA:  Indigenous revolt in Wadeye, target police (also background 
article on Wadeye and the NT crackdown)

http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern_ireland_news.asp?id=67733

29 October 2007

Cops Targeted In Ardoyne Riot

Weekend trouble has left two police officers injured and requiring hospital 
treatment.

The PSNI officers were attacked during trouble in north Belfast's Ardoyne 
district when a gang of about 20 youths targeted a routine patrol aimed at 
tackling anti-social behaviour in the area.

Stones and bottles were thrown at police and damage was caused to police 
vehicles in Ardoyne Avenue. One youth has been arrested, said police.

Inspector Alan Swann said it would take time for the officers to recover. 
"Two officers received a mix of head, leg and body injuries which required 
several stitches to the head and staples throughout their bodies," he said.

"Unfortunately, they will not be able to perform their duties for a while 
due to these injuries."

(BMcC)

VIDEO of police violence and resistance in Canada Real, Madrid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmYQ0hYFKU

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20071018154803328

Madrid: Shantytown Residents Battle Police
Thursday, October 18 2007 @ 03:48 PM PDT
Contributed by: Oread Daily
Views: 245
Dozens of people were injured on Thursday when residents of a Madrid 
shantytown fought Spanish riot police with stones and sticks to try to stop 
bulldozers destroying homes authorities say are illegal.

SHANTYTOWN RESIDENTS BATTLE POLICE IN MADRID

Oread Daily

Dozens of people were injured on Thursday when residents of a Madrid 
shantytown fought Spanish riot police with stones and sticks to try to stop 
bulldozers destroying homes authorities say are illegal.

Reuters says police fired plastic bullets and teargas at stone throwers, 
some of them women and children, and led baton charges at protesters in the 
Canada Real shantytown, home to around 30,000 people, many of whom are 
immigrants from Morocco and Romania.

"They are animals," shouted an elderly man at police as television cameras 
filmed the destruction of a brick home

El País says the 27 injured are 23 police officers and four civilians, with 
the residents using stones, gas bottles and other objects to keep the police 
out of the Canada Real Galiana settlement, located some 30 minutes southeast 
of Madrid's city center.

The injured civilians include a three month pregnant woman. Her family is 
one of those evicted already. Her husband, whose home has now been 
demolished, was one of the nine people taken into custody after Thursday's 
altercations.

Local authorities knocked down over 25 homes on Oct. 9 in Canada Real, many 
built with old doors and windows. Residents said houses were levelled with 
their possessions still in them.

Dozens more homes have been targeted for destruction.

The police were acting on a court order to clear several shanties, a 
spokeswoman for the housing department of Madrid's town hall said. She said 
the city has been looking to clear the city of shanty settlements and house 
their occupants elsewhere for several years.

The following is from Radio Netherlands.

Spanish slum dwellers clash with police

Madrid - Inhabitants of an illegal slum near Madrid have clashed with police 
during an attempted demolition. The inhabitants, who were trying to stop 
bulldozers from destroying their homes, threw stones at the police, who 
responded with tear gas and plastic bullets. Many people were wounded.

The Canada Real district, which consists of dwellings improvised mainly from 
discarded building materials, is currently home to approximately 30,000 
people. These are mainly immigrants from Morocco and Romania. The district's 
population has expanded enormously in recent years, chiefly as a result of 
the massive influx of immigrants into Spain.

http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_13114.shtml

Nine arrests and 27 injured in clashes with police at Madrid shanty town
By m.p. - Oct 18, 2007 - 10:33 PM

Most of the injured were officers who were trying to evict one of the 
hundreds of immigrant families who live in the illegal settlement

Police attempts to evict the occupants of a brick-built shanty house in 
Cañada Real Galiana, on the outskirts of Madrid on Thursday turned into a 
pitched battle, as others in this mainly immigrant settlement came to the 
defence of their neighbours.

El País says the 27 injured are 23 police officers and four civilians, with 
the residents using stones, gas bottles and other objects to keep the police 
out.

The injured civilians include a three month pregnant woman, the mother of 
the family City Hall has evicted for occupying a public right of way. Her 
husband, Abdel, whose home has now been demolished, was one of the nine 
people taken into custody after Thursday's altercations.

Some 30,000 people live in this settlement 15 kilometres outside Madrid, in 
2,000 illegal buildings which are mostly inhabited by immigrants from 
Romania and Morocco.

A court decision is expected soon on the appeal placed by another 7 families 
against their eviction order.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:-Xm3h-Y73iMJ:tvscripts.edt.reuters.com/2007-10-18/350064f6.html+madrid+shantytown+riot&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=uk

 STORY: Dozens of people were injured on Thursday (October 18) when
residents of a Madrid shanty town fought Spanish riot police with stones and
sticks to try to stop bulldozers destroying homes authorities say are
illegal.
    Police fired plastic bullets and teargas at stone throwers, some of
them women and children, and led baton charges at protestors in the Canada
Real shantytown, home to around 30,000 people, many of whom are immigrants
from Morocco and Romania.
    Dozens more homes have been targeted for destruction in the shanty town
which sprawls for 15 km (9 miles) across what authorities say is public
land.
    One shanty town resident Mohamed Zinga called on police to leave his
neighbours alone, saying: "We are not dealers, we are workers. The upper
side is different, but here, in La Cañada there is no robbery and things 
like
that."
    The shanty town sprang up early last decade but has swelled in size
this decade as Spain received more immigrants than any other European
country.
    Madrid's conservative Popular Party mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon has
vowed to close all the city's shanty towns and relocate their families.
    Local authorities knocked down over 25 homes on October 9th in Canada
Real, many built with old doors and windows. Residents said houses were
levelled with their possessions still in them.

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2007/10/29/2459_ntnews.html

Angry mob turns on cops in Wadeye riot
PHOEBE STEWART
29Oct07
TERRITORY police were forced to shoot into the air to stop up to 40 armed 
rioters attacking them at a remote Aboriginal community.
The angry mob advanced at police patrolling the Wadeye community, about 
350km southwest of Darwin, on Saturday night.
They carried machetes, rocks, spears and iron bars.
Police asked the group to disperse from the community's basketball court, 
but they retaliated by trashing several police vehicles.
The mob threw projectiles at police, including their weapons and rocks, 
smashing windows and windscreens and causing extensive panel damage.
Police said officers tried to "tactically withdraw," from the riot but the 
group continued to advance.
And after a number of orders to disperse, an officer was forced to fire "a 
warning shot" into the air from his police issue glock pistol.
Ongoing violence has escalatedin the troubled community over recent days.
Police said they could not confirm whether the violence was gang related or 
not.
But the trouble has forced police to divert a number of extra officers to 
the community.
Another four police officers were sent to Wadeye yesterday afternoon to the 
join the four Katherine officers who were sent on Friday to combat the 
violence in the community, which has a population of about 2500.
Police said officers would continue to monitor the riot and would send 
further resources to the area as they were needed.
They said no arrests had been made and investigations into the cause of the 
melee were continuing.

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/29/2074002.htm?section=justin

Warning shot fired during Wadeye riot
Posted Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:19pm AEDT
Map: Wadeye 0822
Northern Territory Police say an officer fired a warning shot in the air to 
disperse a rioting crowd at the Indigenous community of Wadeye, but only 
after several warnings.
The Commander for Katherine and the Northern Region Command that includes 
Wadeye says there are now 16 police officers in the Territory's largest 
Indigenous community following riots on Saturday night.
Commander Greg Dowd says police cars were damaged when they were set upon by 
a group of 40 people wielding iron bars and machetes.
He says an officer made repeated warnings that he would fire a warning shot 
but the crowd did not disperse.
"He did in fact fire a shot from his Glock pistol into the air and it had 
the desired effect of making them all disperse fairly rapidly and disappear 
into the darkness," he said.
Commander Dowd says police have held meetings with elders from the different 
clan groups in Wadeye today in a bid to ease tensions.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/wade-a24.shtml

Wadeye: a case study of the Australian government's Aboriginal agenda
By Erika Zimmer
24 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Under the guise of concern for Aboriginal women and children, the Howard 
government has seized upon revelations of sexual abuse in indigenous 
communities, initially broadcast in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation 
"Lateline" program in May, to push through its right-wing agenda of "ending 
welfare dependence".
After the ABC program, Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough announced an 
audit of indigenous communities, with "small, unviable communities ... 
encouraged to pack up and leave". The government intends to strip thousands 
of Aborigines of welfare entitlements so as to push them out of remote 
communities and into the "real economy" in towns and cities. The Australian 
estimated that the audit would include 1,000 settlements with fewer than 100 
people.
Two Labor governments-those of Western Australia (WA) and the Northern 
Territory (NT)-are collaborating closely with the federal Liberal-National 
Party government. The NT government is to study 547 indigenous communities 
with a view to targeting "specific communities ... for resettlement or 
service reduction". The WA government announced an audit of 300 indigenous 
communities.
These "audits" have nothing to do with gathering information about the 
appalling conditions in remote communities, let alone attempting to address 
their underlying causes. Brough's spokesman rejected a call by the 
Australian Medical Association, the doctor's organisation, for a royal 
commission into the "health, land and social justice issues in remote 
Aboriginal communities". Such an inquiry was not needed "because we know the 
magnitude of the problem" and "clear objectives and practical initiatives" 
had already been worked out.
What this agenda means in practice can be seen in the Aboriginal township of 
Wadeye, 320 km southwest of the NT capital, Darwin. It has faced the full 
glare of media attention following a riot in May, allegedly involving 
hundreds of young people.
Surrounded by 20 outstations, Wadeye, formerly known as Port Keats, is the 
town service centre of the Thamarrurr region. While rich grazing lands south 
of the region, including the vast Victoria River Downs station, were opened 
up to pastoral interests in the late 1880s with devastating consequences for 
local Aboriginal people, the poor grazing potential and difficult terrain of 
the Thamarrurr region discouraged pastoral settlement.
Lacking an economic base and crippled by chronic government underfunding, 
the region's conditions are comparable to some of the worst in the Third 
World. For example, the median life expectancy is 46 years, with death most 
commonly due to heart disease, kidney problems or diabetes. Twenty percent 
of the children are stunted, 21 percent are underweight and 10 percent 
wasted.
While approximately 800 children of school age live at Wadeye, no high 
school exists. The sole Catholic primary school is able to accommodate only 
300 children. At the same time, a shortage of housing means that up to 20 
people live in each house.
Unemployment stands at 84 percent while the average personal income for 
Aborigines is estimated variously at between $4,000 and $8,000 a year, less 
than 20 percent of the national average. It is little wonder that Wadeye has 
the highest per capita juvenile offending rate in the NT.
One cause of the appalling statistics, according to the community's legal 
representatives, Arnold Bloch Leibler, is the redirection of hundreds of 
millions of dollars away from remote indigenous communities. A detailed 
analysis undertaken in 2004 revealed that Wadeye, the sixth largest town in 
the NT and the largest Aboriginal town was being short-changed $4 million 
per year. According to the National Indigenous Times, Wadeye's leaders are 
preparing to sue federal and territory governments for several decades of 
neglect.
But neither the Third World statistics, nor the lack of government spending 
have rated any media scrutiny. Instead Wadeye first came to national 
attention when Prime Minister Howard flew into the town in April 2005, 
accompanied by a bevy of dignitaries and a large media contingent, to impose 
a Shared Responsibility Agreement (SRA) on the community.
Wadeye was one of eight remote communities selected nationally as "pilots" 
for SRAs, which mark a step towards the complete abolition of social 
spending and welfare benefits. They make the provision of basic services and 
facilities, such as kidney-treatment centres, petrol bowsers and 
air-conditioning, contingent on communities carrying out activities such as 
rubbish disposal and increasing school attendance rates.
This is not the first time that indigenous people are being targeted for 
measures to be used against the entire working class. The CDEP scheme of the 
1970s, which imposed compulsory labour requirements on unemployed Aboriginal 
workers and became the forerunner for the 1990s Work for the Dole scheme.
One of the requirements of Wadeye's SRA was to boost school numbers. A 
massive push by the local community saw school enrolments soar towards 700 
at the start of the school year 2005 and again in 2006. But the shortage of 
desks, pens and teachers due to government under-funding led to five out of 
every six students dropping out.
Taking advantage of the current media blitz, Brough sent a senior official, 
Wayne Gibbons, to the town to issue an ultimatum: residents would be 
stripped of government funding and welfare payments unless, within a month, 
gang members repaired damaged houses and parents sent their children to 
school.
Two elders walked out of the meeting with Gibbons. The Thamarrurr Council 
wrote to Brough, describing Gibbons' behaviour as "verging on just plain 
bullying" and saying it would need more than a month to repair the houses, 
given the extent of the work involved.
"In relation to every child must attend school every day, we point out that 
we have 688 schoolchildren and a school facility that can only hold 420," 
the council wrote. "Your representative, Mr Wayne Gibbons, came here and 
blamed us totally for the problems we are having. Is this how one partner 
treats another, by coming into their home and demanding unrealistic things 
and treating them with disrespect?"
In order to enforce the Howard government's objectives, the NT government 
has joined in unleashing repressive "law and order" measures against the 
people of Wadeye. In June it attempted to ram through court hearings for 
more than 100 Wadeye residents-most of whom were arrested during the May 
riot-over just two days in Wadeye's tiny courtroom.
One 36-year-old resident was jailed for two months and scores of others face 
months or years in prison. Legal proceedings were placed on hold after 
defence lawyers for two of the men charged argued they had no case to 
answer.
On the eve of the hearings, NT Police Minister Paul Henderson unveiled 
legislation providing for greater police powers and harsher penalties to 
deal with gang activity. Police would be allowed to prevent large crowds 
gathering and stop and search alleged gang leaders without a warrant.
Henderson said fast-tracking the court hearings was part of a plan to deal 
with violence at Wadeye. "This sort of behaviour is simply unacceptable and 
we are attacking it at its source, "he said. In reality, with the willing 
assistance of the media, the Liberal and Labor governments have come 
together to try and whitewash the sources of Wadeye's crisis, including 
their own culpability, in order to pursue an increasingly vicious social 
agenda.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22667101-17001,00.html

No excuses for Wadeye rioters, says Mal Brough
By Tara Ravens
October 29, 2007 06:01pm
Article from: AAP
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RIOTING of the kind that erupted in an Aboriginal community in the Northern 
Territory on the weekend must be stamped out, says Federal Indigenous 
Affairs Minister Mal Brough.
Up to 40 people wielding machetes, rocks, spears and iron bars confronted 
local police at the Wadeye basketball court, about 350km south-west of 
Darwin, on Saturday night.
When police asked the rioters to disperse, projectiles were hurled at the 
officers' cars, smashing windows, windscreens and denting the side panels.
"Members attempted to tactically withdraw but the group continued 
advancing," a police spokeswoman said.
"After a number of requests to disperse, one officer fired a warning shot 
from his police issue glock pistol into the air."
Mr Brough today said he wanted to "get to the bottom" of why the rioting had 
occurred.
He said seven different language groups made up the 2500-strong community, 
which has a history of violent outbursts between warring gangs the Judas 
Priest boys and the Evil Warriors mob.
"I am aware there was a disturbance but the reason for the disturbance I 
don't know and we do need to get to the bottom of it," Mr Brough told ABC 
radio.
"What we do have to do is to not tolerate it, you cannot tolerate rioter's 
behaviour in any suburb or any town or any community in Australia."
Mr Brough conceded Wadeye was still a volatile community, despite recent 
improvements.
"We have to stamp it out and people have to know that the authorities which 
are the government and the police who operate on their behalf are in 
control," he said.
"That keeps people feeling safe. Now the circumstances of Wadeye are a lot 
better than it was but any violence is unacceptable no matter what the 
reason is."
The recent rioting at Wadeye began on Friday following a disturbance in the 
community in which a number of police vehicles were damaged.
Four officers from Katherine, sent to assist with the situation, were joined 
by another four yesterday, after local police were confronted by the armed 
mob on Saturday night.
Police today said it had been calm in the community overnight, although 
additional resources were ready to be sent if needed.
There have been no arrests so far over the incidents.
Fifty-five people were arrested in Wadeye after rioting by rival gangs in 
May last year.
One man received a spear wound to his leg, and a youth suffered head 
injuries in the fracas, involving up to 300 people.
In October 2002, up to 400 armed rioters converged on the community oval 
after organised one-on-one fists fights between the warring gangs got out of 
control.
During the melee a teenager was fatally shot in the back by a police officer 
and the community erupted into a war zone as people trashed houses, torched 
cars and vandalised public property.