Tag Archives: Police Brutality in Australia

Aboriginal Struggle, Anti-Racism, Unions

FIGHT TO DETER AUSTRALIA’S RACIST REGIME FROM KILLING ABORIGINAL PEOPLE!

June 7, 2021

Above, 10 April 201, Sydney: Thousands of people of all colours march through the streets of Sydney in a passionate Aboriginal-led protest against the racist state killing of Aboriginal people in custody. Photo credit: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

NEARLY 500 BLACK DEATHS IN CUSTODY IN 30 YEARS

FIGHT TO DETER AUSTRALIA’S RACIST REGIME
FROM KILLING ABORIGINAL PEOPLE!

5 June 2021: In mid-April, thousands marched against racist killings of Aboriginal people. The determined Aboriginal-led protests marked the fact that since a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody thirty years ago, a further 474 indigenous people have died in custody according to official figures. The real figure is thought to be much higher. To put this in perspective, compared to the current Aboriginal population, one out of every 1,500 Aboriginal people have died in custody since 1991. Imagine what that would mean if the Aboriginal population were much larger, say the same as the whole population of China today. Then if Aboriginal people were being killed or driven to death at the rate at which this is going on right now in Australia, one million indigenous people would have died in state custody in the last 30 years! This underlines the sad truth that almost every Aboriginal family directly knows or is related to at least one – and sometimes several – of their compatriots who have died in state custody in Australia.

The mainstream media were too busy eulogising recently dead Prince Philip – an arrogant racist and male chauvinist – to bother highlighting Australia’s carnage of Aboriginal people. When the media did report, they distorted the truth! They portrayed the deaths as if they were due to natural causes or suicide when the truth is that many victims were either murdered by redneck police or prison guards or died due to the racist neglect of these officers. However, families of victims have powerfully exposed the real truths. Among those who addressed the Sydney protest were Leetona Dungay and Paul Silva, respectively the mother and nephew of Dunghutti man, David Dungay, who was asphyxiated to death by six prison guards. Also addressing the protest was Caroline Andersen, the mother of Wayne Fella Morrison, who died after being brutalised by several prison guards and then transported to hospital while forced to wear a spit hood.

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM AUSTRALIA’S CAPITALIST SYSTEM
IS RACIST AND ANTI-WORKING CLASS

Many Royal Commission recommendations were not implemented. If procedures to reduce Aboriginal incarceration and improve the monitoring of prisoners’ health had been acted on there would have been some improvement. But such changes would far from solve the problem. This is because many of the deaths were caused by cops and guards acting in violation of their own procedures. The state personnel who killed TJ Hickey, David Dungay, Kumanjayi Walker and so many other people were obviously not following stated procedures. Neither were those who caused the deaths of Julieka Dhu, Rebecca Maher and Nathan Reynolds through their refusal to render timely medical assistance. These deaths were simply a result of the racist bigotry of cops and guards and their contempt for people without money. No procedure can stop that! As an Aboriginal protest leader stated: Australia’s system needs to be burnt down to ashes!

Australia’s system, a capitalist system, was created when British colonialists threw Aboriginal people off their land and property owners started exploiting the labour of both Aboriginal people and convicts/ex-convicts. Alongside exploiting workers on stolen black land, Australia’s capitalists rob even more blatantly the peoples of PNG, East Timor, Fiji, Indonesia and beyond. This tyranny is backed by the might of Australia’s American ally. To bolster its U.S. godfather’s power, Australia’s rulers support every U.S. intervention – from its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to its backing of its Israeli ally’s brutal subjugation of Palestine. But it is little surprise that Australia’s rulers are among the most ardent defenders of Israeli terror. While Israel was built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, capitalist Australia was built through the genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people. Down, Down Australia – Down, Down Israel – Down, Down USA!

The biggest threat to U.S. and Australian tyranny and exploitation, both at home and abroad, is the spread of socialism – that is of states created by the toiling people’s overthrow of capitalism and which are then dominated by public ownership. Therefore, the U.S.-Australia alliance is in large part about crushing socialistic states. Let’s never forget the horrific war crimes of these regimes in their anti-communist wars in Korea and Vietnam. Now they are preparing for war against a more powerful socialistic foe – the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). If their war drive is not stopped, they could destroy us all!

To protect their theft of Aboriginal land, their exploitation and the system that ensures all this, Australia’s rich capitalists have created a state apparatus. And all the components of this apparatus – the police, prisons, military, courts – and its personnel are immersed in the prejudices that come with their role as enforcers of a racist, exploitative “order”. That is why the only thing that is going to deter state officers from killing Aboriginal people, bullying other people of colour and harassing the homeless is if they are made to pay for their crimes. However, the biggest recommendation of the 1991 Royal Commission, or rather non-recommendation, was that it recommended no charges against any of the cops and guards responsible for the deaths. This was a green light for more state terror! That is why the rate of black deaths has been 60% higher since the Commission. As Leetona Dungay put it: “No more royal commissions, I want real justice!”

ENCOURAGE CHINA’S CALLING OUT OF THE
AUSTRALIAN REGIME’S “DEEP-ROOTED RACISM”.
BUT CHINA MUST MORE AGGRESSIVELY
DENOUNCE AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITIES

How are murdering state officers going to be held accountable for their crimes when the police, courts, coroners and Royal Commissions “investigating” deaths are themselves thoroughly prejudiced? The racist Australian regime does have two Achilles heels. Firstly, to further its predatory aims abroad and its crusade against socialistic states, the regime accuses its adversaries of “human rights violations”. This makes it vulnerable to exposure of its own crimes. Concerted international exposure could thus push the Australian ruling You would not have the ability to think about what you must look for viagra sales australia in a device. One of the most icks.org cialis uk effective ways to lower blood sugar levels in the body which is a pull toy to the mind. Add to levitra without prescription that, he has forgotten to pay the premium on his homeowner’s policy and they drop him. Erectile dysfunction is amongst most common and embarrassing health conditions that let a male personality down in front of cialis generic canada his partner and in his own eyes as well. class to somewhat rein in its racist police and prison guard attack dogs. That is why it is important that in January and then again in mid-March – alongside calling out the Australian military’s horrific killing of Afghan civilians and demanding that Australia free the refugees – the PRC led attacks at the UN by several countries on Australia’s racist treatment of Aboriginal people. Anyone opposed to racist terror should be lauding China’s stand while calling on China to be much more assertive in calling out the Australian regime.

In part to distract from these exposures of its racist tyranny, Australia’s rulers and their lying media have attacked China over “human rights.” These attacks are based on lies. For example, most video clips showing supposed “brutal oppression” of China’s Uyghur minority have proven to be taken in other countries (!) and those that are actually real show docile conditions compared to what is faced by Aboriginal people and Palestinians. The small proportion of Uyghurs opposed to the PRC are whipped up by U.S.-backed, capitalist Uyghurs and religious extremists who both seek to use nationalism to throw off China’s secular, socialistic system. In order to prevent the Australian regime from blunting China’s attacks on Australia’s own racist atrocities here at home by falsely attacking China, we must resist the imperialist propaganda campaign against China.

DETER RACIST STATE TERROR THROUGH MASS ACTION
BY MILITANT WORKERS, ABORIGINAL PEOPLE AND ANTI-RACISTS!

There is a second Achilles heel that could more fundamentally threaten the regime’s ability to subjugate Aboriginal people. And that is the reality that while most non-Aboriginal workers enjoy a social position above most Aboriginal people, they still face exploitation and an uncertain future. For working class people, affordable accommodation is hard to find. Even before the pandemic hit, most young people did not have secure jobs – being either unemployed, in unstable casual or gig jobs or on short- term contracts. Meanwhile, the ever escalating military, police and spy agency budgets show that the ruling class threatens us with a nightmarish future of war and repression. Moreover, the cops who assault Aboriginal people are the same ones who attack strike pickets, protests in support of public housing and staunch unionists. That is why it is possible to mobilise working class defence of Aboriginal people. Let us deter racist terror through building resistance, uniting trade unionists, Aboriginal people, other people of colour and all anti-racists!

The problem is that chunks of the masses are influenced by the – often subtle – White supremacist propaganda of the capitalist rulers and their media. That is why we need revolutionary activists within our unions. They must show fellow workers that opposing racist oppression is essential to unifying the multi-racial workers movement into a force able to defeat our exploiters. This work will need to face down obstruction from the pro-ALP leaders of our unions who while proclaiming solidarity with Black Lives Matter (BLM) simultaneously spread Australian nationalism – nationalism that blinds people to racist tyranny in Australia and which binds workers to their rulers on the basis of an actually non-existent, common “national interest.”

A taste of the potential for working class defence of Aboriginal people was seen on June 6 last year when trade unionists were amongst the tens of thousands who marched against racist state killing of black people in Australia and the U.S. Some Aboriginal activists are furious that most of those who participated in those protests no longer join anti-racist actions. A similar phenomenon has occurred in the U.S. The cause for this in the U.S. was the illusion that changing the president and thus increasing the influence of black and “progressive” Democrats would bring improvements. As the presidential election neared and Biden then replaced Trump, protests dwindled. But little has changed! American cops are still murdering black people on the streets! Here illusions in The Greens play a similar role. To be sure, some Greens MPs like David Shoebridge have been among the few politicians to have the decency to participate in BLM rallies. However, because The Greens, like the “progressive” U.S. Democrats, uphold the current capitalist order, they cannot effectively deter racist state violence even when they want to. At protests, Shoebridge offers a strategy of official inquiries and changes through parliament – sometimes even obscuring the racist nature of Australian state institutions by trying to convince people that “there are many good cops.” This strategy simply doesn’t work! On April 15, the NSW parliamentary inquiry, pushed by Shoebridge, into First Nations deaths in custody was released. It offered more of the same as the 1991 Royal Commission. The new report did not even pretend to tackle systematic racism within the police and prisons. Indeed, racism was not even mentioned once in the report’s recommendations! Staunch Aboriginal activists rightly skewered Shoebridge for defending the report. Moreover, although progressive, pro-establishment politicians like Shoebridge do encourage people to participate in actions when they speak at BLM events, the effect of their promotion of reliance on parliament and state institutions is to demobilise struggle. Especially those not directly affected by racist oppression are left with the message that they can leave it up to politicians and inquiries to do the job.

That is why dispelling illusions in positive change through the capitalist state’s institutions and its parliaments is a big part of mobilising the mass resistance needed to deter racist state violence. The racist cop who murdered George Floyd is finally behind bars because there was a massive black-led uprising following his murder and because millions of American workers took strike action in support of BLM. We need militant resistance here to deter racist terror against Aboriginal people on the way to reducing this racist capitalist system to ashes. Inspired by the courage of black deaths in custody families, let’s build toward worker strike action in opposition to state violence against Aboriginal people!

Aboriginal Struggle

JUSTICE FOR TJ. JAIL FOR THE RACIST MURDERING COPS

August 2, 2015

14 February 2014: TJ’s mother leads a large march to protest the 10th anniversary of the police murder of TJ Hickey and the ten years of racist cover-up by the police and state authorities.

MOBILISE UNITED ACTION OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE,
TRADE UNIONS AND “ETHNIC” COMMUNITIES TO DEMAND:
JUSTICE FOR TJ, JAIL FOR THE RACIST MURDERING COPS

February 2014: It’s one of the most horrific crimes imaginable: a police vehicle ramming the back wheel of a 17-year-old boy’s bicycle and sending him flying through the air to be impaled on a spiked metal fence. Ten years ago, this is exactly what happened to an Aboriginal boy called TJ Hickey after racist cops in another police vehicle chased him through the streets of Redfern. Then, violating the standard emergency procedure of sawing off the fence so that the stake could be carefully removed in hospital, police barbarically ripped TJ from the fence and threw him to the ground. Even as TJ lay bleeding, police proceeded to search him rather than immediately call for an ambulance! The next day, TJ died of his gruesome injuries.

TJ’s killing has been followed by ten years of cover up by the police, courts and various governments. In the meantime, the rate at which black people die at the hands of state authorities continues unabated. In one case in January 2012, Kwementyaye Briscoe died in Alice Springs after being taken into supposed “protective custody” for merely being drunk. Even NT coroner, Greg Cavanagh, admitted
that police flung Briscoe onto a desk, left him bleeding on the ground, dragged him along the floor to his cell and failed to give him any medical treatment even though they knew he was by then in a comatose state. Their heinous actions caused Kwementyaye to die.
Since 1980 over 500 Aboriginal people have died in custody.

Without any doubt, Aboriginal people cop the worst police brutality in Australia. However, the racist authorities also target working
class youth of African, Asian, Islander and Middle Eastern origin. Last June, 17 year-old Sudanese youth, Einpwi Amom was tasered
by police even when he was handcuffed and surrounded by six cops. Einpwi’s alleged “crime” was that he had sworn at officers.
When Einpwi tried to run away from them, he hit his head on the stairs of Blacktown station. He lost consciousness for two minutes only to wake finding cops brutalising – and then tasering – him. Fortunately, a friend managed to capture footage of the attack on her phone. Yet such cop brutality is all too common in working class suburbs. Even low-income white people – such as public housing
tenants – can face police harassment. Indeed, the simplest Marxist analysis shows that the main role of the police, courts, army, Royal Commissions, prisons and other state organs in a capitalist country is to enforce the rule of the rich, big business owners over the working class that they exploit. Although cops sometimes do catch real criminals, whenever the exploited masses stand up for their rights the police’s main function becomes all too clear. Thus, in August 2012, mounted police in Melbourne violently attacked the picket lines of building workers who were struggling against the attempt of greedy tycoon Daniel Grollo’s firm, Grocon, to undercut workplace safety and drive out the CFMEU union.

The racism of the police force comes directly from their role as the bully boys for the ruling class in Australia. The all important unity of the working class is constantly threatened by the bosses’ divide and rule tactics in which whipping up racism plays the lead role. And the ruling class seeks to divert onto Aboriginal people and non-white “ethnic” communities the masses’ frustration about the constantly declining state of social services and their day to day basics of existence. But the ruling class’ oppression of Aboriginal people has an added dimension – it is aimed at perpetuating and justifying the conquest of the first peoples of this land. Indeed, the “culture” of the police and legal system in this country is inherited from one of their major founding functions – to drive Aboriginal people from their land, to carry out murderous “expeditions” against Aboriginal people who resisted and to at various times attempt outright genocide.

Yet, despite this vicious capitalist state determination to bury the truth about TJ’s murder, his family has courageously continued to demand justice. Upon every anniversary of the police crime against TJ, they and their anti-racist supporters have marched in protest. This year’s 10th Anniversary March will rally at 10:30am, February 14 at the corner of George and Phillips Streets in Waterloo. Trotskyist Platform urges all our friends to join this march and to do so understanding that no justice will be granted by any benevolent act of the racist, capitalist authorities. It will have to be won by united action of all those targeted by the state that murdered TJ – Aboriginal people, militant trade unionists, ethnic minorities and the poor.

Trotskyist Platform participation in the march protesting the 10th anniversary of the racist police killing of TJ Hickey. We called to, ‘Mobilise United Action of Aboriginal People, Trade Unions and “Ethnic” Communities to Demand: Justice for TJ Hickey, Jail for the Racist Killer Cops.’

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JUSTICE FOR TJ CAN STILL BE WON BY THE UNITED FORCE OF ALL THOSE WHO ARE TARGETED BY THE SAME STATE THAT MURDERED HIM

Those running the campaign for TJ have sincerely been through every legal process in the book in their quest for justice. First, they had to bear listening to the findings of a police inquiry into TJ’s death that was, as expected, a total cover up. Then the coronial inquiry was yet another whitewash. Eyewitnesses who saw TJ’s bike being rammed were prevented from testifying and the bike itself was held by the police and not presented to the coroner. Then, last April, TJ’s mother, Gail Hickey, and the Indigenous Social Justice Association met NSW Attorney General, Greg Smith. Smith made vague promises but ten months later nothing, of course, has happened. The state institutions have continued to cover up TJ’s murder whether NSW has been administered by the ALP regime that was in power when TJ was killed or by the current conservative coalition. Federal governments have impeded justice – and will continue to do so – whether it is the Liberal/Nationals or the ALP or even the ALP/Greens who are in power. With the authorities slamming one door after another, some involved in the campaign have become demoralised and fear that justice can never be won. Instead, they think that the best that can be achieved are token gestures such as an apology from the NSW parliament. Yet what the denial of justice for TJ really proves is that justice certainly cannot be won through the current presiding strategy of the campaign. The hope that in some corner of the system there will be someone willing to stand up for justice has been dashed every step of the way. All the whitewashes demonstrate this. Rather than appealing to state institutions, justice for victims of police brutality can only be won by mobilising in opposition to this state. A united opposition of all those who are ultimately in the gun sights of the racist, bosses’ state. A campaign that is so uncompromising that the authorities out of fear are forced to concede justice.

Many Aboriginal people do understand that the state authorities are their enemy. This was seen in the heroic February 2004 struggle of hundreds of mainly Aboriginal youth in Redfern. In response to TJ’s murder, they held back heavily armed cops in a nine hour pitched battle that resonated with and inspired oppressed people all over the world. This Redfern struggle, along with the November 2004 resistance on Palm Island (that saw up to 15% of the island rise up to burn down the police station and courthouse in response to the whitewash of the police murder of Mulrunji Doomadgee) will one day take its place alongside the heroic deeds of Pemulwuy, Yagan, Windradyne, Jandamarra and many others who led Aboriginal resistance to the colonial invaders. The heroes of Redfern and Palm Island demonstrate the courage needed to really oppose the racist, rich people’s state. But to triumph today, Aboriginal resistance must also have behind it the support of “ethnic” communities (who themselves face racism), anti-racist activists and most crucially the industrial power of the organised workers movement. Once big business owners who run the country see their profits being hurt by trade union industrial action against racist police terror then they will be forced to rein in their marauding thugs in blue.

How the idea of working class action in defence of Aboriginal people can be made a reality was seen in the campaign in defence of Palm Island resistance hero Lex Wotton. The Sydney-based campaign simply demanded that the enemy drop all charges against Lex. It made no appeals to any state institution whatsoever to be a vehicle for justice. Instead, the movement openly appealed to the common class interests that workers have in defending Lex and in opposing state oppression of Aboriginal people. Thus the calls for the rally in the lead up to Lex’s trial emphasised that:

The subjugation of Aboriginal people is an extreme form of the repression that the authorities are also unleashing against trade unionists who stand up for workers’ rights. The ABCC construction industry police are spying on and intimidating CFMEU construction union members and continue to initiate jail-carrying charges against individual union activists.

Thus the movement was able to win the support of the Sydney Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). This culminated in a stop work action by all Sydney port workers on 7 November 2008, the day Lex was being sentenced by a Townsville Court. Although it was not powerful enough to stop Lex being jailed, the burgeoning movement and the MUA stop work compelled the authorities to give Lex a notably lighter sentence than the ten years plus sentence that they had been planning.

Melbourne, 2012: Police in riot gear attack strike action by members of the CFMEU construction workers union who were fighting to defend workplace safety conditions at the Myer Emporium site. The same police that unleash racist violence against Aboriginal people are the ones that attack the struggles of the working class. It is in the very interests of the workers movement to stand by their Aboriginal sisters and brothers in opposing cop terror.

Today, with the Abbott regime openly threatening repression against unions especially the CFMEU, there is much potential to show workers the common interest that they have with others targeted by the bosses’ state – like Aboriginal people. A strategy like the one that the campaign for Lex’s freedom was waged on is what we need for the campaign for TJ. However, success will not simply depend upon what the campaign itself does. To ensure that the MUA stop work in defence of Lex is the norm rather than the exception for the union movement, we must struggle to replace the pro-ALP ideology and leadership that currently dominates our unions with a Marxist program of struggle based on opposition to this racist, capitalist state. As that struggle develops then not only will we be able to more powerfully fight for justice for TJ, Mulrunji, Eddie Murray and Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio, to sadly name but a few of the victims of racist state terror in Australia. We will eventually be able to sweep away the entire capitalist state so that not only horrific racist state crimes – like the murder of TJ – but also the incessant exploitation of long suffering workers will be but things of the past. Justice for TJ!