Mission & Justice

Irene Gilichibi, 22/7/08

This is the story of a dedicated woman who feels she has been abandoned by the system. Sakare Giegere woes began in 2002. She was a teacher at the time at Biawaria Community school, in the rugged hinterland of Morobe province. Since no other teacher was willing to go to such a remote school, she was compelled to teach four grades that year. This year she would have chalked up her 35th year with the Education Department. However her teaching career ended when she was shot in the back by gunmen in her home in 2002. The incident left her paralysed and since then the Education Department has ignored her plight and the Labour and Employment Department has refused to pay her any worker’s compensation.

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Elias Lari; 22/7/08

Classes at the Holy Trinity Teachers College in Mt Hagen, Western Highlands province, were suspended yesterday following a violent confrontation between students and villagers last Sunday afternoon. In a meeting held yesterday between police, college administration and the local community, the villagers demanded K900,000 from the college for damages done to their homes and properties as a result of the fight. The fight on Sunday was a follow-up from last Friday’s clash in which locals stormed the college and assaulted and injured the principal, James Wia, and two male students. The Friday incident happened at about 2pm when villagers, believed to be supporters of council candidates, demanded the students to leave their classes and join voting for the Holy Trinity ward in the LLG elections. On Sunday, a peace mediation between the two groups turned sour when the students and locals fought again.

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By Katelyn John; 18/6/08

Sydney bashing victim Lauren Huxley has described being blessed by the Pope as a huge honour and a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. Just metres from the courtroom where Robert Black Farmer was last month sentenced to 24 years’ jail for her attempted murder, Ms Huxley and nine other Sydney youths today met Pope Benedict XVI during a ceremony for disadvantaged youths at Darlinghurst’s Church of the Sacred Heart. Dressed in a grey dress and black coat and supported by her father’s arm around her waist, Ms Huxley exchanged a few words with Pope Benedict and received a blessing. After the ceremony, Ms Huxley told reporters meeting the pontiff had been an “unbelievable” experience.

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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?

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Nasser Arrabyee; 25/6/08

As many as 130 Yemeni women were killed in 2,694 incidences of violence and sexual assaults on females during 2007, according to an official report. A total of 970 women, including 345 under 18 years of age, were injured as a result of those attacks, said the report released by the Ministry of Interior on Tuesday. The report, prepared by the Centre for Studies and Researches of Gender at Sana’a University, studied on the incidences and causes of violence against women.

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Jack Khoury; 15/6/08

The 12 suspects in the death of Jewish terrorist Eden Natan-Zada, who was lynched by an Israeli Arab mob in 2005 will be charged with violent assault rather than murder, it emerged on Sunday. AWOL Israel Defense Forces soldier Natan-Zada, 19, was killed after murdering four Israeli Arabs on a bus in the northern town of Shfaram in August 2005, days before Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The suspects were instructed Sunday to appear at a court hearing on July 13, where they will be indicted. Hadash chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh, slammed the court’s decision to charge the suspects with any sort of crime.

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Adele Horin; 14/6/08

Belinda Neal is finally to get professional treatment for her temper. Other MPs and ministers should be joining her in the circle at anger management classes. Neal’s mistake was to behave badly in public, compounding a well-known pattern. But federal and state parliaments are full of members who behave badly in private. They shout abuse at staff, belittle public servants and intimidate those below them. Hothead ministers and MPs are not being frogmarched to counselling - their tantrums are thrown behind closed doors. The behaviour of these bullying MPs is just as unacceptable as Neal’s. The world is full of angry people. For too long, they have got away with terrorising waiters, spouses, employees, children and colleagues. Something has to be done to curb the bullies and help the hotheads.

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Bellinda Kontominas; 13/6/08

Lauren Huxley may for the first time face the man who bashed her, doused her in petrol and left her to die in her home at Northmead more than two years ago. Her protective father, Pat, has said she may be present in court as her attacker, Robert Black Farmer, 39, is sentenced. But he said he would keep her away if there was any chance the two may come face to face. “I plan to go into the court first to suss out the situation and then I’ll decide if she will come in,” said Mr Huxley, who said he wanted to avoid any chance that his daughter, 21, may remember any of the attack. “I don’t want her to eyeball him or him to eyeball her,” he said.

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Paul Toohey; 7/6/08

It was, as far as Northern Territory juries go, a rare vote against the police. Last month Sergeant Michael James Bourke was found guilty of bashing a handcuffed and drunk Aboriginal prisoner in the cells of the Tennant Creek lock-up. Seated in the court with Bourke, 34, was his pregnant wife and 20 or so uniformed and plainclothes officers. What was the message behind this show of solidarity? That bashing blackfellas was all right? It wasn’t just that Bourke, who will be sentenced on Thursday, had admitted kicking Graham Kunoth in the head as he lay on the floor; he had gone further, trying to wipe out CCTV images of the cells. The case has touched a nerve in the Northern Territory - though not, as some might expect, for exposing racism in the force. It has focused attention on what police must deal with on the outback’s frontlines.

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Kessie Tadap; 19/5/08

Police records show that many violent crimes in PNG are gun-related. Chairman of the coalition to stop gun violence in PNG Oseah Philemon said that many people had encounters with and were aware of violent crimes involving the use of illegal guns but these people were passive about the issue. Mr Philemon said this was not doing anything good for the country and as long as its people and leaders remain ignorant, gun-related violence would continue in their communities, affecting innocent people.

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