[Shadow_Group] Indigenous insurrection in Australia over death in police custody

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

  Indigenous insurrection in Australia over death in police custody

November 26, 2004

About 1,000 residents of the Aboriginal community of Palm Island, 
Australia, burned down the local police station, court house and the 
home of the  police officer-in-charge on November 26, after a coroner's 
report revealed that Cameron Doomadgee, a  36-year-old Aboriginal and 
Palm Island resident, had suffered four broken ribs, a ruptured liver 
and a ruptured portal vein, during an arrest for public drunkenness last 
Friday. Doomadgee died about an hour later in police custody. Witnesses 
reported seeing Doomadgee being bashed.

The coroner's report was read to a community meeting yesterday after it 
had been given to Doomadgee's family late on Thursday.

Within hours, hundreds of residents were lobbing firebombs at the police 
barracks and other government buildings.

"This is cold-blooded murder," one person yelled at the crowd, "I am not 
going to accept it and I know a lot of you other people won't".

Local police officers were forced to hide out in a hospital and then 
flee the island, while outside police were flown in by an army Chinook 
helicopter from Townsville and a plane from Cairns. Authorities declared 
an "emergency situation" under the Public Safety Preservation Act, 
allowing police to close the airport, take control of resources and 
buildings and close roads.  Some contractors, public servants, teachers 
and other residents have been evacuated. About 80 police are on the 
island presently, with more expected tomorrow.

Tensions had been rising in the community since Monday, when 200 angry 
residents marched on the police station.

On Tuesday, a police car was assaulted by rock throwers after officers 
on patrol stopped to take down a road block. The police officer who 
arrested Doomadgee, Senior-Sergeant Chris Hurley, left the island that 
same day "for his own safety".

The following day, a group of teenagers attacked the police barracks and 
the police station,  breaking windows and damaging officers' cars parked 
in front of the building.

The conflict on Palm Island is also a reminder of the February 15 riot 
in the Aboriginal neighborhood of Redfern in Sydney, sparked by the 
police murder of a 17-year-old Aboriginal named Thomas Hickey.

"It is very much a white, black issue," said Palm Island resident Nicky 
Willis. "The young people of Redfern were full of anger and now the 
young people here are full of anger."

Aborigine Riots Against Police Brutality -
http://users.resist.ca/~wiinimkiikaa/issue1/aborigine_riots.shtml<http://users.resist.ca/~wiinimkiikaa/issue1/aborigine_riots.shtml>
-- 

Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green<http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green>
In the contradiction lies the hope
--Bertholt Brecht.
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