National Sorry Day: Meaningless in the face of racism and sexism

Watershedd considers the realities of National Sorry Day in the light of the Australian Federal Police’s and the ACT Government’s failures to protect and administer the rule of law to Indigenous women.
Bakchos has inadvertently stoked the thoughts in my own head of late with several of his posts. Last week’s discussion of the Jinn combined with this week’s reading about Heraclitus to reinforce my opinion that the treatment of Ms. Masters and Lucinda McMillan at the hands of the Australian Federal Police are both not only undemocratic, but downright racist and sexist. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher is credited with the concept that a man cannot step into the same stream twice. He believed that the sun was made anew each day and that the universe was in constant flux; as such, nothing is permanent, change is the universal law, revolving in a constant duality reminiscent of yin and yang. Mortal laws must support the divine law. The maxim pointing to mortal practicality, “The people must fight on behalf of the law as they would for the city wall” is balanced against divine proposition that “All the laws of humans are nourished by a single law, the divine law.”
The battle that is being fought via Blak and Black is as for the city walls, with Bakchos calling on the leaders of Australia and its law enforcement agencies to act within the bounds of the rule of law, which in its purest unadulterated form, should reflect divine law. Unfortunately, the rule of law has been subverted for what a small but influential group see as personally important. In failing to maintain the precepts that underpin the rule of law by adhering to the processes that allow victims to be heard, they have in essence torn down the city walls.
Sir Albert Kenny in his tome Ancient Philosophy, draws from the play A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, in which Thomas More argues with his nephew, Roper as to why he will not arrest a spy.

ROPER: Arrest him.

ALICE: Yes!

MORE: For what?

ALICE: He’s dangerous!

ROPER: For libel; he’s a spy.

ALICE: He is! Arrest him!

MARGARET: Father, that man’s bad.

MORE: There is no law against that.

ROPER: There is! God’s law!

MORE: Then God can arrest him.

ROPER: Sophistication upon sophistication!

MORE: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

ROPER: Then you set man’s law above God’s!

MORE: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact-I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I’m a forester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God . . .

(He says this last to himself)

ALICE: (Exasperated, pointing after RICH) While you talk, he’s gone!

MORE: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

ROPER: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: (Roused and excited) Oh? (Advances on ROPER) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast-man’s laws, not God’s-and if you cut them down-and you’re just the man to do it-d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

Thomas More, in this tale, has behaved as he should, within the bounds of the law. He upholds the law in the full knowledge that to do so is to protect not only the Devil, but also himself. He claims not be God, he even accepts that man’s laws are deficient, but he argues to act deliberately against them, even for the sake of catching the Devil, would be to subvert his own safety. Thomas More shows himself to be an honourable man, respectful of both the rule of law and aware of its intent, however inept, to make practical the laws of the divine. He is a man aware of the great gulf between the laws of man and that of the universal divine.
Not so those law enforcers in our modern age who have stood and continue to stand in the way of justice, who have failed to protect Ms. Masters and Lucinda. In a land ‘planted thick with laws’ honourable actions, evidence of divine law, have been replaced with an expediency and efficiency Roper himself could only have hoped. This legal subversion, driven by an agenda that favours political aspirants and power mongers, is fed by men intent upon maintaining a dominance over not only Indigenous Australia, but women.
Some would argue that the Australian Federal Police has been compromised in chasing Australia’s perceived devils outside of the rule of law; but their compromise gave way to absolute corruption when they failed to treat all devils the same, selling their souls to the Inquisitor and the ACT Department of Treasury to pursue a racially based attack upon the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue. It is one thing to chase the Devil; it is another entirely to deliberately deny another victim justice because the laws you subverted in the first instance have left others exposed and unsupported; hence those laws must be cut down as well. In denying Ms. Masters and Lucinda their rights, the Australian Federal Police has behaved like the unscrupulous corporate logging companies that indiscriminately cut down the trees, leaving a barren landscape with nowhere to hide. The deer in the headlights is not the Devil himself, but those who have paid him with their souls. Am I saying that the Australian Federal Police have behaved dishonourably? Absolutely.

… The indigenous peoples of West Papua face systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic power; they continue to be over-represented among the poorest, the illiterate, the destitute; they are displaced by military intervention and environmental disasters; the weapon of rape and sexual humiliation is also turned against indigenous women for the ethnic cleansing and demoralization of indigenous communities; indigenous peoples are dispossessed of their ancestral lands and deprived of their resources for survival, both physical and cultural; they are even robbed of their very right to life …

Beware there be Jinn in the forests: Indonesia and West Papua, a clash of cultures

Women and children are the soft targets in many battles and in the machinations of the Inquisitor’s world in which he presumes to know the truth only known to the divine, Ms. Masters and Lucinda are the prime examples of one man’s power over so many others who seek a truer god than him.
The Indigenous people of Australia remain, 224 years after British settlement, the single most underprivileged group within our nation, with the lowest life expectancies and highest incarceration rates. Whilst Ms. Masters has risen to become Australia’s most senior Indigenous female banking executive, ‘the weapon of rape and sexual humiliation’ has been most effectively used against her. It has proved the ineffectiveness of application to study and persistence in the belief in the rule of law for Indigenous Australians, because even with her qualifications in Arts and Law from the University of Sydney and corporate background the AFP has refused her their protection. Lucinda’s encounter with her assailant was driven by a single purpose, the ‘demoralization of indigenous communities’. Both ladies who have attempted to adjust to the Western concept of the rule of law, having been historically ‘dispossessed of their ancestral lands’, have now been ‘deprived of their resources for survival, both physical and cultural’, not only in their customary law, but in the failure of the rule of law in which they were led to believe. As such they have been ‘robbed of their very right to life’.
Our suffragist forebears battled for voting rights for not only women, but Indigenous Australians. As a central tenet in the Western rule of law, the extension of the one-man one-vote to all Australians regardless of race, colour, gender or ethnicity made each person’s opinion and their personal rights, ostensibly at least, valid and equal. One hundred and ten years since women were granted the vote by the Commonwealth and forty-five years since Aborigines were extended the same courtesy, I believe our forbears would view the plight of Ms. Masters and Lucinda with dismay. Equality still seems as remote as it was at the time of Australia’s Federation.
The double standards put in place by the Australian Federal Police have proved an agenda based not only upon a racist attitude to those of non-European heritage, but to women. For all the rhetoric about the role of women within their ranks and their supposed role in upholding the rule of law, they have deliberately ignored or targeted these two Indigenous women. We need fear the devils unlawfully pursued by the AFP at any cost no less than their own corruption, for it is their own double standards, the racism and sexism that has become their undoing as the protectors of the people. There can be only one way forward: a Royal Commission into the racist, sexist, Australian Federal Police. Perhaps then, Lucinda and Ms. Masters will receive the justice they deserve.

Will you sign the petition calling for a Royal Commission into the Australian Federal Police?

Arma virumque cano

The more classically minded among Blak and Black’s readers will recognise the title of this post as being the opening words of Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, “… sing of arms and of a man.”

Arms and the man I sing, who first from the coasts of Troy, exiled by fate, came to Italy and Lavine shores; much buffeted on sea and land by violence from above, through cruel Juno’s unforgiving wrath, and much enduring in war also, till he should build a city and bring his gods to Latium; whence came the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the lofty walls of Rome.

The Aeneid translated by H. R. Fairclough, The Loeb Classical Library, 1916

The Aeneid apart from being the bane of my existence in high school, where I was ‘forced’ to learn the intricacies of its language at the end of Brother Duffy’s strap, serves another and more profound purpose. The Aeneid is a tale about the travels and travails of a band of refugees from Troy expelled from their country because of a war over which they had no say in or control over (three goddesses had a contest, Paris was the judge and the rest is ‘history’). The first six books of The Aeneid deal with the wanderings of the ‘man’ and his companions in search of sanctuary. A sanctuary they found in Latium.

Driven by the same forces of fate, rapine and invasion that forced Aeneas and his comrades to become refugees three millennia ago, in January 2006 forty-three Papuans sought political asylum in Australia. The outrigger canoe in which they landed on the other side of the Torres Strait flew the West Papuan Morning Star flag (Bintang Kejora) and carried a banner pleading for freedom, peace and justice. The banner also asserted that the Indonesian military was committing genocide in West Papua. The quest for asylum was a political act designed to attract Australian and international attention to the struggle for West Papuan independence.

The Indonesian Government applied considerable pressure on Australia to return the Papuans to the land of their torment. So much pressure did the Indonesian Government apply that in a press conference on 7 April, 2006 then Australian Prime Minister Howard was forced to explain Australia’s position.

JOURNALIST:
One of the concerns that has been raised by the Indonesians is that as a close ally and friend that some special arrangements should have been considered in processing those 43. Would you envisage any future change to processing of unauthorised arrivals from West Papua in the light of that concern?

PRIME MINISTER:
We would not change our processes in relation to a particular expression of concern. We are in the wake of what has happened looking at the processes but we will continue to abide by our international obligations. This is a difficult issue. It is very important that we keep to our international obligations. It is also very important that we preserve a good relationship with Indonesia which I believe will remain the case despite the current difficulties. I think the relationship with Indonesia is very sound, it is very strong. I repeat what I said over the last few days. We regard the people of West Papua as citizens of the Republic of Indonesia and there won’t be any equivocation on that issue and we do not encourage them to come to Australia and we do not encourage Australian non-government organisations to encourage them to come to Australia. It is not in their interests that that happen. It is in the interests of everybody that the process of openness and the new approach which President Yudhoyono oversaw a few years ago continues in West Papua and that they feel fully and completely a part of Indonesian society.

John Howard, Joint Press Conference With The Treasurer, The Hon. Peter Costello MP, Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices, Melbourne, 7 April 2006.

Two important things occurred as a result of this incident. The first was that Australia reiterated its position, a position it had adopted since 1962 that “West Papua… [is] fully and completely a part of Indonesian society.” The second, under pressure from Indonesia over the granting of protection visas to the aforementioned West Papuan refugees, Australia in May 2006, introduced the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill into Parliament. Ostensibly the Bill was to rectify the alleged anomaly that asylum-seekers were treated differently depending on whether or not they had been able to reach the mainland.

While the Bill might have been successful in easing diplomatic tensions with Indonesia to the extent that the new policy was designed to deal with asylum seekers coming from regions of Indonesia, it raises questions about our compliance with the Refugee Convention “without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin” in accordance with Article 3.

In his second reading speech, Mr Andrew Robb makes reference to the ‘incongruous’ situation of onshore arrivals being able to access merits review and the Federal Court system while unauthorised boat arrivals processed offshore are not accorded the same opportunities. This incongruity is wholly attributable to the introduction of offshore processing and would be best addressed by a review of the need for offshore processing rather than measures to deny onshore protection arrangements to all boat people who seek to arrive on the Australian mainland.

The asylum seekers caught by the current Bill are not ‘secondary movement’ refugees but refugees who did not and perhaps could not seek protection in any other country.
The proposed law thus punishes people who arrive by boat when compared with asylum seekers who have travelled entirely by plane. The current Bill may thus be a direct breach of Article 31(1) which states:

‘The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, ….’

This raises the obvious question, why does Australia feel such a need to ‘tug the forelock’ whenever Indonesia enters equation?

Australia’s relationship with Indonesia

In January 1962, when diplomatic tensions between Indonesia and The Netherlands seemed likely to spill over into military conflict, the Australian Minister of External Affairs, Sir Garfield Barwick, persuaded the Menzies Government that Australia’s interests were best served in a close and cooperative relationship with a united Indonesia. Barwick argued that it was not in Australia’s interest to support an independent West Papua as promised by the Dutch. Such a state, he contended, would be small, unviable, indefensible and the focus of Indonesian antagonism.

The rationale behind Barwick’s strategic assessment of relations with Indonesia – that it was not in Australia’s interest to foster the emergence of small states in the eastern archipelago – informed the policy decisions of the Whitlam and Fraser government about East Timor in the mid-1970s. Barwick’s rationale also underpinned the Howard government’s declarations of Australia’s support for Indonesia’s sovereignty in West Papua during the current crisis that unfolded amidst the arrival of the 43 Papuan asylum seekers in January 2006.

West Papuan resistance to Indonesian rule commenced shortly after Indonesia assumed control over the administration in 1963. The Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka – OPM) was established in 1964 and the first major revolt around Manokwari took place in 1965. The OPM’s armed resistance was local and sporadic, but persistent. OPM never threatened Indonesian control of the territory, but Indonesia has not been able to eliminate it or the aspirations for independence that the OPM represented for many more West Papuans than those who joined its armed struggle.
When the Suharto government came to power in Indonesia in 1966, it wanted to restore Indonesia’s standing in the international community. One of the ways of achieving this was to fulfill Indonesia’s obligations under the New York Agreement and permit the West Papuans to determine whether they wanted to remain in Indonesia. Given the strength of Papuan resistance and the significant deterioration in material conditions since the Dutch left, the Suharto government faced a dilemma: how to hold an ” Act of Free Choice“. That produced the only acceptable result for Indonesia – a unanimous vote of the West Papuan people in favour of joining Indonesia – and to do so in such a way so that the result appeared to be the credible and legitimate expression of the will of the Papuan people. Pieter Drooglever author of Act of Free Choice: The Papuans of Western New Guinea and the limitations of the right to self-determination noted that:

“In the opinion of the Western observers and the Papuans who have spoken out about this, the Act of Free Choice ended up as a sham, where a press-ganged electorate [of 1025 selected Papuans] acting under a great deal of pressure appeared to have unanimously declared itself in favour of Indonesia.”

The Australian Government might have been embarrassed and uncomfortable with the manner in which Indonesia conducted the 1969 “Act of Free Choice”, but the outcome – West Papua’s incorporation into Indonesia – was consistent with the strategic decision it had made in 1962, a strategic decision that is still favored in Canberra to this day.

In fact according to the Australian Council for International Development’s (“ACFID”) Garth Luke:

“Melanesia and East Timor are now widely perceived in official and academic circles as an ‘arc of instability’ within which economic development has also largely stalled.”

Garth Luke, no date. ‘Australian Aid: A Mixed Bag’, Australian Council for International Development

In 2007 Chauvet, Collier and Hoeffler estimated the total cost of failing states at around USD$276 billion annually in lost GDP, with Pacific island nations accounting for US$36 billion of that.[1]

The Failed States Index defines a failed state as:

“.. one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force.”

In the 2011 Index some 177 sovereign states are ranked on their vulnerability to collapse according to 12 indicators, among them conflict, corruption, demographic pressures, poverty and inequality. The rankings are headed by Somalia and dominated by countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Timor-Leste was perceived to be the most vulnerable state among West Papua’s neighbours, although its 23rd place ranking reflects an improvement in its domestic security situation since 2008. The Solomon Islands was ranked 49, Papua New Guinea 54, Indonesia 64 and Fiji 68.

It’s this fear of having failed states on Australia’s doorstep, along with the consequences of that reality, should it occur, that drives Australia’s obsession with maintaining a unified Indonesian state. The reality of sovereign state failure for Australia came in the form on Tim Spicer’s Sandline International. In 1997, Nick Van den Bergh led an Executive Outcomes military team into Papua New Guinea (“PNG”), as sub-contractors under the prime contract of Sandline International. This operation was to capture the Panguna gold mine operated by British/Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. The massive copper and gold mine on the Papua New Guinean island territory of Bougainville had been closed by the independence-minded Bougainville Revolutionary Army in 1989.

For USD$36 million Sandline would provide 44 Special Forces personnel, mainly British, South African and Australian to fight alongside PNG Defence Force personnel. Not only was Sandline to receive USD$36 million, but in a series of meetings between Deputy PNG Prime Minister Haiveta, Tim Spicer, and several other figures, Sandline explored the possibility of buying out CRA’s stake in Bougainville Copper Limited, the owner of the Panguna mine, which was at the heart of the Bougainville conflict.

Traditionally, the ultimate symbol of the sovereignty of a nation is its ability to monopolize the means of violence, i.e. raise, maintain and use military forces. If a venerable state contracts this symbol of sovereignty to the private sector, particularly a Private Military Company whose employees include the so called elite of the former South African Defence Force (“SADF”) – including former commanders and members of the Koevoet counter-insurgency unit (a police unit that cooperated closely with the SADF in northern Namibia), 32 (Buffalo) Battalion, 1 to 5 Special Forces Reconnaissance regiments, 44 Parachute Brigade, the offensive intelligence units of the Civilian Co-operation Bureau (CCB), former Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC) – as well as Special Branch detectives and top-ranking officers of the former South African Police (SAP), and then offers the contractors a permanent base, this has the potential to raise concerns with that state’s neighbours. It was on the back of the Sandline incident that the Australian Federal Police (“AFP”) formed the International Deployment Group (“IDG”).

Papuan refugees: cruel Juno’s unforgiving wrath

Indigenous West Papuans are a Melanesian people in common with Pacific neighbours PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji and are thus racially and ethnically distinct from the vast majority of the Indonesian population. Indeed, New Guinea as a whole (East and West) is home to almost 1,000 indigenous languages with a reported 267 on the Indonesian side, representing around one-sixth of the world’s ethnicities. This diversity in culture has resulted from factors including mountainous terrain, dense rainforests, steep valleys, impenetrable marshland and large distances, which have combined to create isolated communities speaking different languages and developing different cultures. Different, but nonetheless Melanesian, not Indonesian.

The Papuans exodus across the border into PNG began within weeks of Indonesia assuming administrative control in 1963. There are approximately 13,500 West Papuans living in exile in PNG. It should be noted that not all Papuan flight from Indonesian security operations and political tensions has been manifested as flight across the border into PNG. Where Indonesian security operations have been conducted at some distance from the border, internal displacement is what generally follows.

Most of the Papuan political refugees who fled to PNG in the 1960s have not returned to West Papua and many involved in the large scale exodus of the mid 1980s remain in refugee camps in PNG. The most senior of the West Papuan politicians of the last years of the Netherlands administration, Nicolaas Jouwe, Markus Kaiseipo and Herman Womiswor left with the Dutch and lobbied for international support for West Papuan independence from a secure base in The Netherlands.

They were followed in 1969 by Clemens Runawery and Willem Zonggonau, who made an abortive attempt to present the West Papuan case to the United Nations. The flight into exile of pro-independence leaders reflects not only the restrictions on political activities in West Papua but also the importance of the international community in how Papuans think of their struggle for independence. This reflects the role the United Nations played in brokering the 1962 New York Agreement, its subsequent supervision of the Act of Free Choice in 1969 and contemporary Papuan demands that the UN re-examine its acceptance of the results of the Act of Free Choice. Willem Zonggonau died in Sydney in October 2006

Since the fall of President Suharto in 1998 following widespread public protest after the Indonesian economic collapse, there has been a resurgence of West Papuan nationalism. Along with this resurgence in Papuan nationalism has come more pressing demands for greater accountability from foreign extraction and resource companies operating in Papua.

Control over Papua’s natural resources is a core issue confronting both the indigenous Papuan’s and the Indonesian migrants. Leaked US Embassy cables reveal the private concerns of American officials over the Indonesian military’s role in West Papua. An October 2007 US Embassy cable quoting an Indonesian foreign affairs official stated that, “The Indonesian military (TNI) has far more troops in Papua than it is willing to admit to, chiefly to protect and facilitate TNI’s interests in illegal logging operations.” An earlier cable from 2006 cites a PNG government official as saying that the TNI is “involved in both illegal logging and drug smuggling in PNG.”

Original post here

Aborigines and the Australian Justice System

The following post appeared on Blak and Black today under the title Aborigines and the Australian Justice System I thought it worth sharing with my followers.

For very many Aboriginal
Australians the phrase Australian justice system is an oxymoron. There are any
number of reasons, many of which are justified, why we as Aboriginal
Australians think of the Australian ‘just-us’ system as being exactly as it
says, a system that is just for us, which if you are an Aboriginal only serves
to further entrench your marginalization. The following exchange between a
Canberra based public prosecutor and a senior Canberra based public servant illustrates
the point well.
“You don’t have to worry about your little boong
mate Marky [the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue] suing you for fitting him
up. When I’m finished with him he’ll be in the gutter where he belongs with all
his other boong mates. You will be able to piss on him as you step over him on
your way to work” (Exchange
between ACT DPP Prosecutor[i] to ACT Department of Treasury
Official)
As
reprehensible and personally insulting to every Aboriginal Australian the
aforementioned comment is, it highlights a more sinister undertone within the
Australian psyche, that of systemic and institutionalised racism, my topic for
today.
Before I
venture into today’s topic, it is worth mentioning that the Prosecutor who
uttered the aforementioned words has worked as a prosecutor in a number of Australian
jurisdictions, in which capacity he would have come into contact with large
numbers of Aboriginal clients. Given that the role of the DPP is to ensure a
fair and unbiased trial for the defendant, there is prima face evidence that this Prosecutor has failed in that role,
when dealing with Aboriginal clients. As such, I call on all jurisdictions in
which this Prosecutor has worked to reopen all cases which he has been involved
in where the defendant was an Aboriginal Australian, with a view to giving each
convicted Aboriginal defendant, who had the aforementioned Prosecutor as their prosecutor
a fresh trial.
This being
said, many if not most racist attitudes are underpinned by systemic factors;
individual racist attitudes do not exist in a vacuum: they generally draw upon
collective or culturally embedded images, stereotypes and representations of
Aboriginal people. Individuals, particularly
those who are part of an institutionalised culture, such as the public service
or the police, may feel empowered in their racism because that may feel that
their behaviour is implicitly, if not officially, sanctioned within their
organisation. Tackling systemic and institutionalised racism requires a cultural
shift in the approach agencies take to Indigenous clients, one where
Aboriginality identity is not denied, ignored as irrelevant, or – worse still -
viewed as the problem when agencies deal with Aboriginal clients.
Unlike the
rest of Australia, in particular the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria has
mechanisms in place to monitor institutionalised practices and has created a
reform environment. Rates of Aboriginal over-representation are lower in
Victoria than in other jurisdictions with considerable efforts being made to
change agency practices and empower Aboriginal communities. The Aboriginal
Justice Forum, the RAJAC
system and linked process under the Aboriginal Justice Agreement, are a model
for both Indigenous involvement and inter-agency cooperation; as such they
constitute models of best practice for other jurisdictions to follow.
Similarly, the Indigenous Issues Unit in the Department of Justice plays an
invaluable role in sustaining the RAJAC process while ensuring that there is
coordination between community initiatives and broader justice policy. This linkage
is extremely important. So too is the linkage between justice policy and the ‘underlying
issues’ which have such a profound influence on life chances of Indigenous
people.
The current
situation in relation to Aboriginal over-representation in Australia’s ‘just-us’
system is a result of an array of historical and social factors, rooted in the
unique experiences of Aboriginal Australians, who have suffered over two
centuries of injustice, denial of cultural and genocide at the hands of an alien
culture imposed on us by a white and prejudiced colonising power. This has
resulted in a dynamic inter-play between criminal justice and social-structural
factors. Aboriginal people from whom I have taken statements were keen to point
out that many of the underlying causes of these social-structural factors – including
health, housing and employment – needed to be addressed before there would be
any far-reaching and sustainable reductions in rates of Aboriginal
overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. These can only be tackled
through improved forms of partnership between Aboriginal communities and all
levels of government, in an environment free of racial stereotypes and systemic
and institutionalised prejudice.
Mental
Health Issues in Aboriginal Communities
When
considering the impact that institutionalised racism has on Aboriginal
Australian’s and the long term implications of this for the socio-economic
outcomes for the Aboriginal community combined with the obvious flow-on effects
to justice policy, it is worth considering the real social cost of white
injustice for this discreet group within the wider Australian community.
A number of
times during my consultations with individual Aborigines and Aboriginal
organisations I was told that Aboriginal deaths in custody statistics are not a
good barometer of the health of Aborigines in the ‘just-us’ system. This is
because, in custody, there is significantly less opportunity for self-harm and
greater surveillance to prevent self-harm, “but the intent is often still
there.” Suicide, it was argued, may be displaced into other contexts and
settings. In the words of one respondent, a former prisioner:
Aboriginal
people still die in custody but it’s hidden - they suicide before they get to
court, or in the mental health system. Either that or they just become mentally
and psychologically dead, by dying inside.
Several Aboriginal
respondents to my request for statements in support of my proposed application
to the United Nations argued, in relation to Aboriginal deaths in custody, that
it is too restrictive to look at deaths in correctional facilities. Self-harm
in “kindred institutions of forced confinement[ii]”
such as the mental health system, as well as correctional facilities, should
also be considered as they are part of an overall context shaped by extreme marginalisation.
It follows that post-release suicide should also be counted; a view supported
by research showing a significant death rate amongst people serving community
sentences in Victoria[iii].
These views were coupled with a deeply held conviction that society itself is a
kind of prison.
Whites
don’t see that society is a prison for some Koori kids.
There was a
sombre and fatalistic recognition by some youths of the consequences of their
life-styles, life-styles that are the outcomes of over two centuries of marginalisation,
discrimination and abuse and the hands of white Australia and its ‘just-us’
system:
It goes
like this: paint – ganja – petrol – speed – pills - heroin – dead.
If white Australians were able to put their prejudices aside for just a
moment and consider the implications of what has been said above, namely that: “Whites
don’t see that society is a prison for some Koori kids” Australian society
as a whole would realise what this statement really means and the implications
it has for the reconciliation process.
Many young Aborigines
are subject to child protection as well as juvenile justice orders. There has
been some criticism that child protection workers “de-allocated” cases as soon as
there was involvement with juvenile justice. Juvenile Justice staff suggested that
this may be due, in part at least, to caseload pressures generated by mandatory
reporting. Whatever the reasons, the real losers of this process of “de-allocation”
are Aboriginal youth, or those Aboriginal youth who are most a risk of becoming
long term victims of white Australia’s ‘just-us’ system.
Best
practice Model
Victoria has
the lowest rate of remands in custody for young people in Australia. This appears
to be attributable to the general juvenile justice culture within the State and
also to the parameters of relevant legislation. For example, section 128 of the
Children and Young Persons Act 1989 (CYPA) requires cases to proceed by way of summons
“except in exceptional circumstances”; and section 129 limits remands in custody
to 21 days at any court appearance.
However, it
is central to the notion of systemic racism that even where general figures may
appear positive, they can obscure specific areas of concern.[iv]
During Blak and Blacks information gathering process, many Aborigines raised
concerns that remands were sometimes used by the police and the courts as a method
of “back door sentencing”; which appeared to be more prevalent with rural and
Aboriginal youth than with white metropolitan youth. Anecdotal evidence suggests
that while some Aboriginal youth spent the 3 weeks contemplated by the CYPA,
others had served much longer periods on remand. Respondents believed that this
type of “back door sentencing” was a form of punitive remand designed to “give
the community a break”. If bail is being used in this way, it is an improper
use of the system and is a form of racially motivated corruption by police and
the courts.
One of the
main focuses of Blak and Black’s research has been to try to understand the
forms and levels of systemic and institutionalised racism that operate within
the Australian ‘just-us’ system and public service, as opposed to the overt or
direct racism that we as Aborigines experience every day of our lives at the
hands of a so called free and democratic Australian society. Interestingly,
when Blak and Black began taking statements from younger Aborigines who had
just completed periods in detention, they immediately complained that they had been
subject to direct racism within the system. This included racist language from
police, which is an area of concern raised by Blak and Black on numerous occasions.
They also claimed that staff in detention facilities had used racist language
to them and gave examples of racially insensitive attitudes and behaviour.
How this
type of racism can be justified in a modern correctional service which has as
its primary objective ‘reintegration’ of offenders is beyond Blak and Black’s
understanding and points to the fact that the ‘just-us’ system is racist to the
core, which is just another way of saying that corruption rules in Australia’s ‘just-us’
system. The supposed objective of ‘reintegration’ is especially true of
juvenile justice, which has always placed a stronger focus on rehabilitation as
opposed to punishment. ‘Reintegration’ itself presupposes that the people were
‘integrated’ in the first place which is in itself an issue of building on
pre-existing resources. The questions of integration and building pre-existing
resources become somewhat problematic when dealing with people who are alienated
from both the black and white communities because of systemic injustice in the ‘just-us’
system.
This helps
to explain Aboriginal cynicism about the programs offered in detention.
Aborigines generally express the belief that these programmes fail to meet
their needs and are generally “boring”.
Aboriginal
youth particularly point to the fact that juvenile justice workers didn’t give them
enough support when detained in prison, or on release and believed that the
programs they were offered did not always fit their specific needs.
Juvenile
Justice Staff in turn complained that there are inadequacies post-release support
services, particularly in the country where such services are “thin on the
ground” and highly dispersed. ‘Reintegration’ was likewise hampered by a
shortage of educational opportunities for Aboriginal youth.
A number of
Aboriginal youth respondents to Blak and Black also reported that they were so
cut off from the Aboriginal community that it was not always possible to
reintegrate. They believed that they had been stigmatised in their local
community, many also stated that they had been involved in local programmes and
had run out of options. Furthermore, many Aboriginal youth said that they didn’t
want too much Aboriginal involvement: many from the city were involved in
street subcultures and didn’t want Aboriginal specific services. They don’t
self-identify as Aboriginal.
This self-denial
of culture on the part of Aboriginal youth is itself indicative of the success
of Australia’s programme of subtle genocide which aims at separating the
individual from their communities which in turn eventually destroy individual
communities and renders true the maxim of Terra
Nullius for all time. Naturally if the concept of Terra Nullius becomes fact in truth as well as in myth, then
Australia will have succeeded in achieving something that not even Nazi Germany
could achieve – the systematic and complete destruction of a culture in the
name of securing an invaders ‘right’ to peace and security in ‘their’ own land.

[i] The Director of Public
Prosecutions, Australian Capital Territory, is well aware of the name of the
individual prosecutor who uttered these overtly racist words. Mr Phillip Hart
provided that information to the Australian Federal Police and the ACT DPP in
2006 after he posted the comment on his site. To this date no action has been
taken by either the AFP or ACT DPP regarding these comments. Subsequent to
making these comments, the named Prosecutor has been involved in a number of
other trials involving Aboriginal Australians.
[ii] Wacquant L (2000) “The
new Peculiar Institution: On the prison as Surrogate
Ghetto.” Theoretical Criminology. 4.3.
[iii] Biles, Harding and
Walker, 1999
[iv] Morgan N (2002) ‘Going
Overboard? Debates and Developments in Mandatory
Sentencing, June 2000 to June 2002’, Criminal Law
Journal, vol 26, no 5, 293-312.

The role of Bakchos in the 21st Century

As you all know, we Olympians have had a bad trot, recently – well actually since the Edict of Milan we’ve had a terrible time, our temples have been converted to churches, and then stables, Mosques and, well who knows what…..

So life’s been tough but a god’s gotta do somethin’ after considerable consultation with Zeus, Hera and Semele (ah yes, Semele), I’ve decided to devote the next few hundred years or so to exposing the graft, corruption and racism within the ACT Public Service and the Australian Federal Police – believe the gods, there is a lot there.

Enough bullshit for now, time to get the Bakchai together and track down some corruption in the Stanhope Government.

Stay tuned for updates!!

House Warming – The Gods Reply

In praise of Bakchos Anne that sweet musician sung,
Of Bakchos ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums;
Flush'd with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:
Now give the lady breath; he comes, he comes.
Bakchos, ever fair and young
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bakchos' blessings are a treasure’
Drinking is the householder’s pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

He has come out of a black hole into glaring light and he will be overwhelmed by it.

"And all the charms of face or voice Which I in others see, Are but the recollected choice Of what I feel for thee."

Als ich ein jung' Geselle war (When I was a young bachelor)

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums....