Freedom Socialist • Vol. 17, No. 4 • January-March 1997
Freedom Socialist • Vol. 17, No. 4 • January-March 1997
DATELINE AUSTRALIA
Speaking tour exposes racist "law and order"
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee
leaders target Victoria
by Delia Maxwell
Delia Maxwell, a member of Melbourne Radical Women and an activist in the Australian Education Union, coordinated publicity for the tour.
ALTHOUGH LAWS enforcing Australian-style apartheid are off the books, state governments continue to control indigenous people's lives through racist law and order campaigns.
Faced with an upsurge in Aboriginal struggle, politicians have extended police powers in ways which ensure that being indigenous is an excuse for arrest, a ground for conviction and a guarantee of a harsh sentence. The recently elected Federal government has slashed the Aboriginal Affairs budget and encouraged a climate of racism which will lead directly to more jailings and deaths -- on top of an already scandalous jump of 61 percent in the Aboriginal imprisonment rate between 1989 and 1995.
Indigenous people are being systematically ripped away from their culture and their country. For many who are detained, suicide is the only way out. Others are murdered by jailers, who are never charged.
This means that the work of the New South Wales Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee is urgent. The recent tour of Victoria by two leaders of the ADICWC was an inspiring example of how the most oppressed people in Australia are also the foremost fighters against the system that oppresses us all.
Warm reception for grassroots organisers. The ADICWC formed in 1987 and successfully lobbied for a Royal Commission to investigate the large numbers of Aboriginal deaths in prison. ADICWC also provides assistance to the families of those who have died and defends the rights of prisoners. Its radical, grassroots approach inspired similar bodies in every state except Victoria.
To address this gap, the ADICWC sought the help of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, activists of long standing for Aboriginal justice, in organising a tour of Victoria by Barbara Nicholson, ADICWC's president, and Ray Jackson, coordinator. We were delighted to accept.
And we were thrilled as invitations for speaking engagements for Ray and Barbara, endorsements, requests for leaflets, and calls for interviews poured in. We felt we were seeing our politics in action as a broad range of people and groups came forward to say that the ADICWC struggle is their struggle, too -- unions, gays, students, women's groups, and other Koori organisations all offered support.
What a dynamic duo are Barbara and Ray! Most of the nine November days they spent here involved multiple commitments and lots of travel, and we were amazed at their stamina. On one day in Melbourne they met with representatives from the Victorian Labour Council, crossed town to speak with the state Commissioner for Corrections, tacked back to talk with officials from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and then were whisked by car to a country meeting 160 kilometres (100 miles) distant.
White lies and rural racism. One of the aims of the tour was to find out why indigenous incarceration rates in Victoria are so much less than in other states, and why detailed information about Koori prisoners is so scarce. In meeting with the Commissioner for Corrections, Ray and Barbara learned that not even he was sure of the number of Aboriginal prisoners statewide.
They did discover a basic piece of the puzzle, however: Official incarceration rates in Victoria are low because arresting officers decide whether a person is Aboriginal based on the colour of his or her skin! After generations of forced assimilation, many urban Kooris don't fit this racist criterion.
The tour delegates visited Deer Park Women's Prison and had discussions with Koori inmates there. They also spoke with the manager, pointing out the many ways in which this private prison does not comply with Royal Commission recommendations. There is electronic surveillance even in the toilet stalls; half of the staff are men, as are the doctors; and there is no Aboriginal liaison officer.
At Pentridge Prison, a depressing and dangerous place, the governor again did not know how many of the inmates are Koori. A group of Koori prisoners who met with Barbara and Ray told them of the appalling 19th century conditions in the jail and of the sharp need for the creation of a Victorian Watch Committee.
In the city of Portland on the southern coast, Barbara met with representatives of the Gunditjmara nation and visited their land at Lake Condah. It was a stark example of official racism. As retribution for an anti-racist protest in 1994, authorities had the water, public phone and electricity cut off, and the services are still disconnected.
Also in Portland, Barbara received a tremendous welcome from the South West Trades and Labour Council, which is very active in backing indigenous struggle.
Ray, meanwhile, travelled north to speak with the traditional owners of the lands along the Murray River, and then returned to Melbourne to talk with representatives from the Aboriginal Legal Service. Although cool to the idea of a Watch Committee in Victoria, they confirmed the suspicion that the state judiciary is, if anything, worse than others in its dealings with indigenous people.
United front success. At the end of a demanding nine days, Ray and Barbara returned home.
Their visit was a triumph. It brought together individuals and groups in Victoria who together represent a rainbow of the oppressed. And it broke through the wall of silence surrounding indigenous prisoners, laying the groundwork for a Watch Committee based on grassroots activism.
Most important, it showed the effectiveness of united front organising as a response to the vicious attacks of a decaying system that wastes and cuts short the lives of so many people, uncounted and uncountable.
Readers can subscribe to four issues of the twice-yearly Australian Freedom Socialist Bulletin by sending $12AUD or $15USD to: FSP, PO Box 266, West Brunswick, Vic 3055, Australia. Outside the U.S. and Australia, please send an International Bank Draft for $20AUD).
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