November 20th, 2005
November 19 marks a dark day for the indigenous community of Queensland. It marks the first anniversary of the death of indigenous man, Cameron (Mulrinji) Doomagee, after a brutal beating at the hands of the Palm Island police. Doomagee’s death sparked riots in the Palm Island community during which the police headquarters was burnt to the ground.
To date no charges have been laid against the perpetrators despite eyewitness evidence of police mistreatment and medical evidence indicating that Doomadgee bled to death in police custody without medical treatment. Police have been accused of hiding evidence in an alleged surveillance tape of the night Doomagee died. A Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation cleared police involved and an inquest has failed to lead to any convictions.
The anniversary comes at a bad time for the Palm Island Community who face 95% unemployment, severe housing shortages that have resulted in an average of 17 people per house and water shortages that may result in evacuation of the island. The QLD government has ineffective at solving these problems that indigenous people say are intentional and genocidal. These living conditions continue to alienate people from their culture and deprived of decent human living conditions which most Australians take for granted.
A vigil was held outside Queensland Parliament House in Brisbane on Friday. Attended by Doomagee’s relatives and supporters from the local community, people called for and end to police racism and the continuing crimes of aboriginal deaths in custody at a rate of one a day nationally.
Aunty Jean, from the local indigenous spokeswoman called for the reinvigoration of the black power movement to see their rights recognised. She also called for the help from the white community to help them fight back against the neglect of the Queensland government. She spoke a prayer for the family and all aboriginal people touched by deaths in custody.
Doomagee family members were present. Alec Doomadgee, Cameron Doomagee’s cousin and local Brisbane media activist with 4AAAfm said that it was ‘horrible’ being black, because there is so much racism in the community. He said that Cameron Doomagee was “good man, he wasn’t a trouble maker he wasn’t a small man though it’s hard to believe his liver could have been split in half by a fall on some steps.”
Local Brisbane indigenous activist Sam Watson noted that the Qld government could be easily mobilised by a bomb scare on the buses, but seemed unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers of Doomagee. The police officer implicated was in fact, promoted to a better post on the Gold Coast a fact that has had no attention from the mainstream media.
The Redfern mob sent a statement of solidarity, calling for justice for all aboriginal people “who seem to die so easily in police custody”.
Brisbane indigenous activists are calling for a big national mobilisation for aboriginal rights for Human Rights day December 10.
Categories: indigenous rights, social justice |
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November 10th, 2004
It’s been no secret that John Howard and many of his cabinet would like to keep most women out of the workforce and at home having good consumeristic babies. Howard went about elimnating a lot of women’s services when he first got in in 1996. Check out this article for details: [Anne Summers IWD lecture 2003]
Today, with his new ‘mandate from the masses’ giving him control of the Senate, he’s set his sights on eliminating aboriginal services and unions are next.
Not only has he (with Labour’s help mind you) eliminated ATSIC - the only indigenous elected body in Australia - but he will introduce new rules that set indigenous people aside as basket-cases in need of guidance. The extent of his arrogance is unbelievable!
Under the new plan, indigenous families will have to force their kids to go to school or risk losing welfare payments. In addition, Howard proposes that cleanliness and diet will be assessed. Considering the lack of access to things like clean water and decent health care in many indigenous communities, this add insult to the already considerable injury the government has perpetrated on indigenous people since 1788. In addition, the lives of indigenous people are constantly under scrutiny - the govt hiring security guards to watch people in a new housing development [ABC], and a raid on the National Indgenous Newspaper in Canberra[ABC] are recent examples, although ongoing ‘racial profiling’ by the police is occuring.
Fortunately the Australian Council of Social Services and the UN Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have both challenged this plan, labelling it racist and paternalistic. ACOSS points out that indigenous Australians are the poorest group in Australia with life expectancy that is 20 years less than the general population; unemployment rates that are 3.8 times higher; and school retention rates to year 12 that are 44% below that of other Australians.
“Indigenous people must have the tools and resources to take the initiative and manage their own services. History has shown that reliance on old-style paternalism or mainstream services can not reduce poverty, poor health and disadvantage.” ACOSS has recently draw attention to the way that representative demcoracy in this country continues to fail indigenous people: - in the electoral system - in the govt’s actions to take away thier self-management - in delivering health care - in the govt’s actions that exacerbate poverty [and here] - in the criminal justice sytemThe impulse to punish for poverty and disadvantage in citizens largely caused by government policy is frightening but typical of atop-down approach to government.
The UNHREOC claims the new welfare requirements breach the Race Discrimination Act.
Murandoo Yanner had stronger words. Yanner says it is a return to the oppressive 1960s. “It is reverting to an already tried and failed method, with no logical basis to it other than ultra-conservatism…Basically, it is about paternalism, having a great white god watching over us and teaching us to wipe our kids’ noses.”
Other indigenous leaders join him, with one saying “It’s denigrated our Aboriginal community - it’s totally created apartheid within Australia, this move by the Howard Government”. [ABC-1] [2] [3]
But where is the outrage in the non-indigenous community? It’s only a matter of time before Howard targets poor white Australians again. We must all have self-determination to live decent lives, not the authoritarianism of a self-styled dictator proclaiming his right to guardianship over us. It’s an important time for non-indigenous Australians to stand together with our indigenous brothers and sisters because many of us are next
originally published on Darwin Indymedia
Categories: indigenous rights, social justice |
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November 10th, 2004
Daily, the mainstream news reports on one of the effects of the West’s dependence on oil — war. However, even when outright war has not broken out, life in communities where oil is being extracted is often violent, unhealthy and exploitative.
Nnimmo Bassey works with OilWatch and Environmental Rights Action to uncover the destructive activities of the many oil companies operating in Niger Delta, including Shell, ExxonMobil (Esso) and ChevronTexaco. He works to expose human rights abuses, which are often government sanctioned.
Bassey is trying to raise awareness about how the initial stages of the climate change cycle — the extraction of fossil fuels to meet the excessive demand of energy consumptive states in the North — cause chaos and human rights violations in his homeland.
In Australia, we are highly dependant on coal for our electricity production. Yet we still consume the equivalent of 872,000 barrels of oil per day, and rate ninth in the world for per capita consumption. We are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. These facts highlight the extent to which we need to take responsibility for the human rights and environmental effects of our energy consumption.
Bassey describes the Niger Delta landscape as “criss-crossed” with petroleum pipes that leak and spill oil into the streets and on agricultural land and are “never adequately handled”.
There is constant gas flaring and explosions, accompanied by “unbridled repression of the local people by occupation forces”. These forces include Nigeria’s own military, which continues to act at the behest of a corrupt government in league with transnational oil corporations.
The industry has such a pervasive grip on Nigeria that Bassey says “oil-related activities have led to the destruction of whole communities, the killing (including extra-judicial murders) of thousands as well as [the production of] thousands of external and internal refugees” with hardly a murmur from the international community.
The extraction of oil is synonymous with pollution. Indeed, Bassey maintains, “it can be said without fear of any contradiction that no oil spill has been adequately cleaned up in the Niger Delta”. The environment has been severely degraded in many places. Bassey believes the oil industry is intrinsically hostile to the environment and the people who live on it.
Waste products from oil extraction include gas, drilling mud and drilling cuts. The constant gas flaring, where gas is burnt off as an unprofitable byproduct of oil extraction causes “continual noise, acid rain and retarded crop yield, corroded roofs and lung diseases”. Bassey says that gas flaring has resulted in the Niger Delta being described as “the biggest single industrial complex in the world contributing to global warming today”.
Human health has suffered so much so that the Niger Delta is now a place “where life is short and unpredictable; where so much wealth is extracted and where so much wretchedness is evident”.
In addition to the lung diseases related to gas flaring, the pumping of mud waste into marine environments may be responsible for food-borne poisoning and illnesses. Explosives have been used in many places to the extent that aftershocks “have been known to impact on the auditory systems of sea birds and mammals finally affecting their ability to community and procreate. Other side effects are noted in diminished food supplies, increased cases of hypertension and endocrine imbalance. The ultimate impact is on the fish supply on which the economy of the local people hangs.”
Bassey links oil extraction to climate change in the area: “Climate change was once a remote possibility. Today it is a reality and an immediate threat to the very existence of island and coastal communities.”
Attempts to clean up oil spills have been either poorly attempted or non-existent. Legislation has been enacted to absolve transnational oil corporations of responsibility if they allege sabotage. Bassey claims, “[corporations] often set whole forests on fire in a bid to wipe out the evidence of the spills.”
Many human deaths have resulted from explosions or toxic cleaning chemicals in oil spills. Pipelines can also explode, a recent incident caused the deaths of 1000 people at the Jesse petrol pipeline in the Niger Delta. As in other occasions with other corporations, the state-run oil company NNCP attempted to place responsibility on the victims, accusing them of being saboteurs and vandals.
In 1999, the government blamed anti-Shell “rebels” for the deaths of four police officers, and razed an entire town, Odi, in retaliation. According to Human Rights Watch workers who visited the town two weeks after the attack, the stench of decomposing bodies was noticeable a kilometre from the town, and there were only three buildings left standing.
Ultimately, the promises made by government and industry of higher standards of living, new roads, school and hospitals do not materialise or fail to remain once the companies have made their profits. In addition, oil companies make no pretence to public consultation in Nigeria, unlike in Western countries. These double standards amount to environmental racism.
Bassey says: “The oil industry believes that the people have no right to know what is happening in their environment. Dialogue, they believe, ends in social tokens such as classroom blocks and ill-equipped health centres.”
The connections between oil extraction, climate change and human rights could not be more obvious than they are in Nigeria. For the predominantly poor rural Nigerians, the effects of climate change heap injury upon injury: deforestation (which Bassey describes as “a truly vicious circle”, because as climate change increases, so does deforestation through tree death, which further increases climate change), heat waves, tropical diseases, salinisation of crop lands, rising sea level and the dislocation of potentially millions of people.
Bassey’s trip to Australia is one of hope. The solidarity of the Australian people is essential for the reformation of his country, indeed the unjust system that makes the Niger Delta as it is today.
In Bassey’s words: “It is time for all of us to realise that environmental actions have environmental costs. Laws must be enacted to ensure that the environment is protected against both public and private actions that fail to take account of costs and harms inflicted on the eco-system. Our environment, indeed, is our life.”
originally published in Green Left Weekly
Categories: environment, indigenous rights, social justice |
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