Archive for the ‘Racism’ Category
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Jamie Walker;15/5/10; (3 Items)
The investigation into the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee was stripped of credibility because of a “perception of collusion” between local detectives and the policeman who caused the Aborigine’s fatal injuries. But Queensland Deputy Chief Magistrate Brian Hine, delivering the findings of the third coronial inquest into the affair, found yesterday there was no evidence that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley had meant to inflict the injuries that killed Doomadgee. The open finding on whether his death was accidental or deliberately caused by Sergeant Hurley dashed the family’s professed hopes to finally secure “closure”. Doomadgee, 36, died after he was arrested while drunk on Palm Island, off Townsville, on November 19, 2004, creating such outrage in the community that people rioted a week later.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Death in Custody, Human Rights, Racism
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Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Yuko Narushima; 9/5/10
When Kerry Arabena was told the Royal Flying Doctor Service could not attend to a young boy whose finger had been severed, she was furious. ”That boy was going to be a concert pianist,” she said before slamming down the phone. Reflecting on what sparked her passion for indigenous justice this week, the public health specialist came back to that moment. ”That was a pivotal point,” the 42-year-old says. ”I realised that I could be incensed with rage about how systems could deny people entry, or make economic decisions about what their value was.”
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health, Human Rights
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Friday, May 7th, 2010
7/5/10; (3 Items)
1.
Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio and television host, political commentator, author, and entrepreneur. He is the host of The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally-syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Beck is also the host of a self-titled cable-news show on Fox News Channel. As an author, Beck has gained success with six New York Times-bestselling books, with five debuting at #1. Beck is also the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multi-media production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet. Beck has become a well-known and polarizing public figure, whose provocative views have afforded him media recognition and popularity, along with controversy and criticism. To his supporters, he is a conservative champion, defending traditional American values from secular progressivism, while to his detractors he is notorious for conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric.
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Tags: Christianity, Social Justice, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Racism, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Michael McKenna & Tony Koch; 6/5/10
The Crime and Misconduct Commission has recommended two senior officers, picked by Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson to review the discredited investigation into the 2004 death in custody of Palm Islander Mulrunji Doomadgee, face disciplinary charges for an alleged whitewash. A draft CMC report has accused the Ethical Standards Command officers of running a biased investigation to protect other police. It is alleged that witnesses were guided in their answers in interviews, with some provided in advance with copies of the questions they were to be asked. A further allegation is that some key witnesses were not even interviewed by the officers, privately described by Mr Atkinson as among his “most respected”. Last night, a Queensland Police spokesman would not comment on whether the Ethical Standards Command report would be released, although the CMC has committed to putting it out within weeks.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Death in Custody, Human Rights
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Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
Matthew Franklin & Patricia Karvelas; 5/5/10
Tony Abbott has sparked a fresh battle in the so-called history wars by arguing that Australian history has rarely seen discrimination based on race or culture. Echoing former prime minister John Howard, the Opposition Leader also rejected the “black armband view” of history, praising Howard-era border security policies as “tough but effective” and vowing to reinstate them if he wins this year’s election. But his comments on racism were rejected as unrealistic by Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda, while the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia accused him of promoting public fears about immigration for political reasons. The Howard era featured lively debate about the past, with the history wars dividing the nation between those who endorsed Mr Howard’s belief that people were being taught a “black armband view” of the past and those who favoured a critical view of the nation’s heritage.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Racism
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Racism | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Jodie Minus; 3/5/10
A father of two from Brewarrina in northwest NSW and a former social worker from the ACT are the new faces of indigenous representation in Australia. Sam Jeffries, 46, and Kerry Arabena, 42, were yesterday announced as co-chairs of the executive board of the newly established National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. The announcement was made at The Australian Hall in Sydney – scene of the milestone Aboriginal Day of Mourning and protest in 1938 – and attendees smiled and hugged each other on what they called another “landmark day”. Dr Arabena, who was recently awarded a doctorate in human ecology from the Australian National University, has an extensive background in public health, administration, community development and research. Her professional appointments range from political agencies, such as director of the Regional Governance Unit in the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination in Canberra, to health services.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
28/5/10
The battle for an Australian charter of rights is the debate that will not die. The question has been a persistent part of the national discussion since World War II. The decision of the Rudd government last week to rule out a national human rights act in favour of a human rights “framework” will not change that. In fact, over time it will likely strengthen the case for reform. The debate will not go away because Australia has several persistent, deep human rights problems. Most people in the community live comfortably and without fear of their basic liberties being breached. This is not the case for many others, and the failure to treat these people with the dignity and respect they deserve is what drives the push for reform. The human rights report prepared late last year for the Rudd government by Father Frank Brennan was based upon story after story of Australian governments neglecting or ignoring people’s basic rights. Disturbingly, many of these breaches were based on policies about which our major parties have been in furious agreement, such as those that affect the lives of asylum seekers and Aboriginal Australians.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
28/4/10
Former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s Queensland home remains on the market, but not for everyone. Muslim buyers, for example, aren’t welcome. Ms Hanson, who has put up for sale her million-dollar property in Coleyville, south-west of Brisbane, announced she was moving to Britain earlier this year. Her hardline views on race sparked a national debate over immigration policy and Aboriginal disadvantage from the time she entered Parliament in 1996, the same election that made John Howard prime minister.
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Tags: Australia, Racism, Religion
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Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Marcia Langton; 24/4/10
Those living but not working in mining regions are suffering economic disaster Karratha and Roebourne are neighbouring settlements, one a port and mining dormitory town on the coast of the southern Pilbara region of Western Australia, the other an old town, a half hour inland, where most people are Aboriginal. Karratha has new brick houses, tree-lined streets, substantial amenities, a motel, shopping centre, restaurants and tennis courts. Roebourne is old, dusty, and showing signs of years of neglect: broken fences, potholes, weeds and flaking paint. Here and there a well-kept house and garden appear incongruously among the other homes. A TAFE college, a few offices and a basketball court signal that someone decided to spend some state money in Roebourne, rather than concentrating all new investment in Karratha.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Housing, Trade, Workers
Posted in Aboriginal, Aid / Trade, Australia, Human Rights, Racism, Workers | No Comments »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Lex Hall; 24/4/10; (2 Items)
It was just past sunrise on a cold Alice Springs Saturday when white man Glen Swain started kicking Aborigine Donny Ryder in the head. Consumed by hate, his mind twisted by the full bottle of Bundaberg rum he had drunk through the night, Swain could think only of revenge against the black man who had thrown a bottle at his mate’s car. The trainee pest exterminator lined up Ryder, lying defenceless in the red dirt, and delivered two vicious kicks to his head, stopping only when he noticed his victim was motionless, “sort of like a rag doll”, as he told police. Swain would later explain the cowardly attack as a case of “tunnel vision”. “I was doing what I was doing, not worrying what everybody else was doing,” he said during a police re-enactment at the scene.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Racism, Reconciliaion
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
David Nason; 22/4/10
The South Australian government will consider a negotiated settlement of future Stolen Generations civil actions following the final Aboriginal victory in the Trevorrow test case. The state’s new Attorney-General, John Rau, made the concession while rejecting using a compensation tribunal to deal with 100 other potential such cases. Mr Rau’s comments came as George and Tom Trevorrow presented Premier Mike Rann with a detailed submission for a tribunal on behalf of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority. The submission calls for the establishment of a tribunal to run for five years that would make “fair, just, quick and efficient determinations” on compensation for Aborigines illegally taken from their families as children.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Reconciliation
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Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Peter Kirkwood, April 17/4/10
Ten Hail Marys By Kate Howarth; UQP, 302pp, $34.95
Peter Kirkwood is a former producer in the religion and ethics unit of ABC television and the author of several books on religion.
L. P. Hartley’s aphorism that “the past is a foreign country” is amply illustrated by this memoir. It’s the harrowing tale of a teenage pregnancy in the 1960s, the pressures on the mother to give up her baby for adoption — the norm then for single girls in her position — and the psychological trauma of the experience. In December 2000, the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Adoption Practices 1950-1998 put out its final report, and it provides a broader context for Kate Howarth’s compelling story.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Children, Human Rights
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Racism | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
John B. Judis; 17/4/10
John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
When asked about his race on the US census form, Barack Obama, the child of a white Kansan and black Kenyan, did not take the option of checking both “white” and “black” or “some other race”. Instead, he checked “black, African American or Negro”. By doing that, Obama probably did what was expected of him, but he also confirmed an enduring legacy of US racism.
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Tags: Racism, USA
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Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Lex Hall; 17/4/10
Police in remote communities are misusing their power and risk forcing violence and alcohol abuse underground if they don’t adapt to the indigenous world, a legal aid report has found. Residents complained of officers conducting rough searches without warrants or regard to sacred objects, interrupting ceremony to make arrests and on one occasion shooting a pet dog that had bitten a child. A survey of more than 330 residents in 14 communities found police appeared to be “on holiday” and were often unresponsive to reports of crime, including domestic violence. Led by the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Services, the report into community perceptions of police in remote communities under the federal intervention found “cultural awareness” among officers was “too narrow”.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Legal, Religion
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Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Ross Fitzgerald; 17/4/10;
History; Palm Island; Joanne Watson; Aboriginal Studies Press, 212pp, $34.95
Professor Ross Fitzgerald has written 32 books, most recently the co-authored Under the Influence: a History of Alcohol in Australia and his memoir, My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey.
How rare is it that two equally fine books appear at roughly the same time about the same, or similar, topics? Chloe Hooper’s remarkable non-iction novel, The Tall Man, was published in 2008. This award-winning work deals with the death on November 19, 2004 of 36-year-old Palm Island man Cameron Doomadgee, who swore at a policeman, Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley – then 33 years old, weighing 115 kilograms and 200 centimetres tall. Forty-five minutes later, Doomadgee was found dead in a watch-house cell.Now we have Joanne Watson’s passionate and magisterial history, Palm Island: Through a Long Lens, whose opening and final chapters also deal in detail with the death in custody of Doomadgee, as well as the riot and widespread civil unrest that followed this tragic event.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Racism
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Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Damien Murphy; 17/4/10
A leading light … Caroline Kelly-Tennant as a young woman and, right, her photos of Aboriginal life in Cherbourg, Queensland, in the 1930s. She had honeymooned at Kyogle decades earlier and in 1987 the beautifully spoken elderly widow returned to the northern NSW town to grow herbs. There she kept pretty much to herself, occasionally telling locals of a life long ago: of sitting on Winston Churchill’s knee as a toddler, of her friendship with Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist, how the NSW governor’s wife, Lady Game, stormed out of a play she produced at Pitt Street’s Aeolian Hall and the day the Herald told of her honeymoon plans – a walk from Sydney to Brisbane. Grahame Gooding, a grazier who worked at the local stock and station agent, sold her a house in the village of Ettrick but within two years she died, aged 89.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Reconciliaton
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, Racism | No Comments »
