Shadowed by tragedy
Chloe Hooper; 28/6/08
A day before John Howard and Mal Brough announced their plans for the Northern Territory intervention last year, a different shock wave hit Aboriginal Australia. On June 22, a Townsville jury found Queensland police officer Chris Hurley not guilty of unlawfully killing Cameron Doomadgee at the Palm Island police station in 2004. The case had come to epitomise the worst version of race relations: Hurley arrested Doomadgee for swearing at him, and 40 minutes later the Aboriginal man lay dead on a cell floor with injuries that the pathologists said were consistent with a fatal car or plane crash. Hurley walked free, then we watched as more police were sent into remote Aboriginal communities. The Palm Island case and the intervention have become the two defining events in recent indigenous affairs. Was there a connection?
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23932728-5013172,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Palm Island, Violence