Sunday, September 14, 2014

What type of justice are you shopping for? Update...


##UPDATE

In response to questions that have followed from yesterday’s post, there are a few things I should add:


  1. That the overly attentive bald fellow in question is not actually any type of friend – I was being sarcastic – deadly funny, I am;
  2. This specific type of interference/harassment routinely coincides with court cases relating to police human rights abuses – not army – and usually where the victim is, or was, Aboriginal;
  3. In the recent past police have been caught and prosecuted for providing intelligence to the local ‘skinhead’  ex-military groups that circumvented their prosecutions for race hate crimes;
  4. Specific notorious police race hate crimes against Aboriginal individuals, which have been successfully prosecuted in the past, have involved men who at that time had the visual appearance of ‘skin heads’, but by the time of their trials, their appearance had been significantly altered;
  5. It appears that at least one of those victims was followed & harassed, and allegedly committed “a violent offence against an ‘off duty’ police officer”, who just happened to be passing the said victim at that time;
  6. Government delays and disinterest in providing details of deaths in custody - in my experience, have related only to those that occurred in police custody (in addition to deaths in police presence and deaths in police lock-ups);
  7. Two of four of those custodial deaths findings were relinquished a few months ago – after several years of repeated enquiries to the coroner’s office;
  8. One finding that has been requested and is outstanding currently, is the death at the Langley Plaza on 2-4-12 at around 2am http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/man-plunges-to-his-death-in-perth-cbd-siege-drama-20120412-1wtbm.html . This ‘death in police presence’ related to a man who allegedly exited the hotel, through his window, and this allegedly caused his death - after police attended. It is still being investigated, allegedly, and an inquest date has not yet been set;
  9. I am happy to post photos of said overly attentive characters here, detailing their appearance via photos or videos; vehicle registration numbers; and the time and dates of their acts of obsessive fandom in the future;
  10. I am still deadly funny.
If you have any information regarding the death in police presence at the Langley Plaza Hotel on April 2nd 2012 - regardless of which side of the law you are on, please feel free to email me so that info can receive some appropriate ventilation. Deaths and human rights abuses occurring pursuant to contact with police is a matter for the public's knowledge and the public has a right to know about State abuses and possible State abuses.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

What type of justice are you shopping for?

Four stories from yesterday's news inspired this post. Now I have to thank my very special hair impaired friend for going so far out of his way to remind me so clearly yesterday afternoon, to check what cases were going through the courts. Bingo. It was quite a shadowy day, in the big picture of things. I did make a FB post about this yesterday, to acknowledge my follicly challenged fan's efforts, but it lacked detail & I opted for a blogpost instead. 

I need to add at this point, that racism is ugly and vile, and not something I am interested in having here at this blog, or, in my everyday life. Similarly, racists too, are ugly and vile. They are also not something anyone - or any reasonable person, that is - wants in their daily lives. 

Background (for o/s readers):

Pursuant to wars and atrocities some people can react defensively, by becoming racist. It's been this way in Australia in the past. But, two local racist, fascist groups are run by former military service people and it is not an easy climate in which to write about human rights, at times. Additionally, it isn't just former service people - some police, in the past eight years (repeatedly), have also been caught for involvement with local and overseas neo-fascist 'skinhead' groups. Ironically, after violent human rights abuses have been detected previously, suspect officers were relegated to non-field roles - like phone tapping, intelligence gathering and surveillance. Unfathomable.

White supremacist racism was prevalent in mainstream Australian society following WW2, amid the White Australia Policy era - during which, basically, everyone who was not white and middle class were perceived by the government as a threat. It was a horribly broken mentality, that shouldn't have co-existed during Australia's participation in a war against fascism. Government political actions were brutal, usurped the independence of the judiciary, and compromised the nation's justice system forever afterwards.

Government policies before that era, and for quite some time after, dictated the control and isolation of all diverse peoples, including migrants and refugees. The Stolen Generations and the Forgotten Australians were a cruel by-product of that era. The effects still impinge on our democracy's equilibrium, and our justice system today. 

Those racist policies facilitated:
a) economic devastation for TOs (traditional owners) via a sleight of hand that took traditional lands away from Aboriginal nations - communities and families - and gave it to mining developers and pastoralists, and,
b) the gagging of Aboriginal nations from asserting themselves before an independent judiciary, by jailing them for spurious reasons. {This imprisonment included the abduction, indefinite detention, brainwashing, torture and abuse of children in State "care", i.e. the Stolen Generations and Forgotten Australians.}



This mind-boggling clip of an interview with mining magnate Lang Hancock (deceased) was re-discovered via John Pilger's movie Utopia (and a special Magnet hat tip to a wonderful journo Chris Graham who was the Associate Producer of the movie), which has been a huge success. Lang Hancock has an Aboriginal daughter, who lives without access to his vast estate. The clip details his support for government Aboriginal genocide.

Aboriginal people are still jailed for spurious reasons at increasing rates. The government throws its hands up in the air and claims appropriate remedies for its past actions are totally beyond them. The remote lands once appropriated, are now 'shared' with the historic owners, whose health is failing due to poor water quality, poor accommodation, inadequate remote and regional medical care, lack of access to culturally appropriate community-driven education, poor nutrition, and prevalent chronic illnesses, that all prevent empowerment and cause a massive disparity in life expectancy between Aboriginal people and non-indigenous people.

Aboriginal imprisonment rates - or 'Black' imprisonment rates as termed in some other countries, are so high in some parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory that prisons are now being constructed for the sole purpose of being culturally appropriate for Indigenous people.  Other older prisons in WA have long been termed 'Aboriginal prisons' solely due to the high Aboriginal composition of the prison population, while being culturally, completely inappropriate for those they hold. 19 out of 20 Aboriginal men in the Northern Territory prisons have chronic lifelong ear disease and hearing loss.

Aboriginal justice issues:

Yesterday, A court found that current serving police officer Ben Gartner had been violent and abusive when he assaulted an Aboriginal teen in the 'Sallyport' of Halls Creek police station. Halls Creek is a remote North-West Western Australian town. The judgment spared him jail, reportedly, on the basis that jail time would be bad for his policing career. There is also this report from during the trial

Another incident also came to light yesterday in which Aboriginal children in Moree were removed from their family home by police with automatic weapons. De ja vu? 

The Deaths In custody Watch Committee of WA Chair, Marc Newhouse, spoke publicly of his concern regarding delays in coronial findings relating to deaths in WA custody. As a journalist, repeated enquiries I have made about 4 deaths in custody inquests (involving Aboriginal children and adults), stretching back 7 years in some cases, have continually been buried. Appeals for transparency to both private and public sector agencies, in what is meant to be a mandatory independent public reporting system, have been ignored. 

Ray Jackson of the ISJA in NSW reports that a 24 y/o Aboriginal man in Wollongong, allegedly died in a car crash, subsequent to a police chase. The family await a report and an inquest date.