Friday, October 20, 2006

Aboriginal deaths in police custody

The following link shows a slide show of photographs of the campaign for justice for a young indiginous man, Mulrunji, killed in police custody. Please be pateint while the slide show loads:
http://www.socialist-alliance.org//page.php?page=586

As Dave Riley reported in Green Left Weekly:

Queensland Murris (Indigenous Australians) and their supporters marched on the state parliament on October 10. In a protest called to coincide with the first sitting day of the newly elected Labor government, the 600 demonstrators confronted Premier Peter Beattie with the demand that senior sergeant Chris Hurley be sacked.
A state deputy coroner’s report handed down on September 27 had found that Hurley had caused the death of Mulrunji, an Aboriginal man in his custody, at the Palm Island watch-house on November 19, 2004. The deputy coroner, Christine Clements, also found that senior police had conspired to cover up the circumstances of Mulrunji’s death.
It was an angry crowd that gathered at the parliament gates. Petitions demanding that Hurley be sacked were handed to the premier, who addressed the crowd amid catcalls and abuse. Cameron Doomadgee, Mulrunji’s brother, told Beattie, “I want you to do right by my brother”.
Beattie asked the crowd to respect “due process” but, as Indigenous speakers at the protest had already pointed out, Hurley had been allowed to work as a police officer for almost two years after the killing and while he was under investigation. Given the very clear findings handed down by the coronial inquest, the Indigenous community is adamant that Hurley be sacked and charged.
The rally and march had been organised at short notice, but drew protesters from Palm Island as well as parts of south-east Queensland. At the community meeting that followed the march, plans were made to hold another protest on November 19, the second anniversary of Mulrunji’s death.

2 comments:

Frank Partisan said...

It is good you are covering an often ignored struggle, unless you are local.

Dave Riley said...

The Socialist Alliance National conference is schedule for next weekend.We're going to hold in regional Victoria -- at Geelong where the SA has ben rather succesful in the local working class community.

Our draft resolution for conference is very concrete and tries to summarize where this regroupment project is at:

SA draft conference resolution

Sam Watson was the indigenous candidate for the SA in the recent Qld state elections.