Riot on Palm Island

Indigenous Riot on Palm Island highlights racism in Queensland
28 Nov 2004 20:44 GMT

On the 19th November 2004, on Palm Island a community just off the east coast of Townsville, Queensland, Australia an Aboriginal man by the name of Cameron Doomagee was arrested for singing a song on a street in the Palm Island Community, just over an hour and half later he was dead in the police cell." National Indigenous Human Rights Congress Australia from the Melbourne Indymedia Newswire

Palm Island, home to over 4000 indigenous Australians has turned into a crucible for bad race relations in Australia after the death in police custody of indigenous man Cameron Doomagee this week. Last Friday the shock and anger in the community erupted into a 'riot' after release of an autopsy finding that Doomagee death, of "intra-abdominal haemorrhage caused by a ruptured liver and portal vein... (with) four broken ribs" was "accidental", the result of a 'fall' outside the watchouse [Townsville Bulletin article] . The police station, court house and police residence were burnt to the ground as local expressed their disbelief and anger at the judicial system.

An eyewitness reported by SBS to have "been in a watch-house cell and seen an officer strike Mr Doomadgee as he was being led out of a paddy wagon". [SBS article here] Queensland has the highest rate of deaths in custody of indigenous people with 19 deaths in 2003[Source: Aust. Inst. Criminology]. Police / community relations were so bad that the Palm Island Doomadgee's arresting officer, Senior-Sergeant Chris Hurle, was first to flee the island on November 22, soon followed by non-indigenous journalists, teachers and other government employees.

Many Indigenous people are living in third world conditions in Australia: with less access to health care, education or employment prospects leading to a life expectancy 20 years less than non-indigenous people. The social stigmatization in rural Queensland associated with being indigenous has often led to open racism in the past, with Queensland being the last state to repeal the forced separation of indigenous mothers from their mixed race children and the ghettosiation of Aboriginal people into reservations in 1971; in 1974 200 Murries protesting against Queensland's racist legislations, were suppressed by the Bjelke-Petersen government, who accused them of being terrorists who wanted to kill him; in 1982 in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games, tent embassies in King Geroge Square in the city center were fire-bombed and protestors brutalised by police; in 1993 4000 people protested the death of Daniel Yock, claimed to have been beaten to death by Queensland police; in 1998 the success of the One Nation party running on a platform that increased division between indigenous people and migrants. Racism in the army at Townsville, from which Palm Island is just 40 kms offshore, was highlighted by the November 11th release of a photo of 20 soldiers posing as Klu Klux Klansmen and the subsequent revelation that racism caused one indigenous soldier to commit suicide [ABC story]

In recent months the abolition of peak indigenous elected body ATSIC, and top-down modes of control by both state and federal governments introducing alcohol bans in some communities and Howard's threatened welfare penalties to parents who do not force their children to attend school, have exacerbated race-relations Australia-wide, indicating a new era of government paternalism towards indigenous people which has been described by indigenous activists as "having a great white god watching over us and teaching us to wipe our kids' noses" and denigrating the Aboriginal community, creating apartheid within Australia. [Related opinion piece here] The Queensland Police Union of Employees acting general president Denis Fitzpatrick labelled the riot as "un-Australian". National Indigenous Human Rights Congress Australia is calling for a UN enquiry

[ Wikipedia article: Palm Island. | The shameful white history of palm island ]
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