In Memory of TJ : Melbourne Indymedia

"My message to Bob Carr is to show 100% also to this Aboriginal community here, 110% behind us, because we do need a lot of services here for our young people and we don't want to go through this process again in another week or another 6 weeks time or in another year. We don't want no more of our young kids to die. We want to see positive action and not just talk."

Ray Mittagong, Redfern local pastor, Crossroads Church

"Being black and being born in this country puts you behind the eight ball, but for all my life spent living as an Aboriginal girl and an Aboriginal woman I would never ever swap what I am or who I are for anything, because being Aboriginal gives me a depth of understanding about my people and about my country and about the history that's gone on for 215 years that many people don't understand, don't comprehend and certainly have no compassion about."

Jenny Munro, Redfern community activist

WORDS AND STORIES FROM A COMMUNITY UNDER ATTACK

Usually, a tragedy involving a child results in sympathetic media coverage, tearful parents pleading for witnesses to help police with their enquiries, and supportive statements from elected leaders. When 17 year old Aboriginal Thomas Hickey (TJ) was impaled on a fence on Valentine's day, police called for backup before any call was made for an ambulance, the accident scene was cleaned up within hours of his crash. After he was pronounced dead the following morning, police built up in Redfern, Lawson Street was closed and a riot seen by the world was used by State Liberal leader John Brogden to justify calls for Israel-style population management stategies.

All of a sudden, everybody had an opinion on people few ever talk to. Media and government talked about the Block in Redfern as a problem community, rather than listening to a community's problems. Judging by their response, NSW politicians might use a guillotine to fix a headache. A court denied one of TJ's aunts bail to attend his funeral, police arrested his young girlfriend for abusive language at a BBQ put on by the community and South Sydney Council after the weekend of trauma, and a state prison refused his father leave to pay his last respects.

Meanwhile channel 10, the other boys in blue, aired dubious footage of bagsnatches which hadn't even taken place in Redfern as justification for the area's heavy policing. Insult was added to injury as they broadcast security camera footage of TJ threatening a convenience store with a cigarette lighter. Had they investigated, TJ's friends would have told how he'd returned to the store where he'd gone to buy food after being made to leave because he was Aboriginal. Had they asked, family could have told how "he was the little father to all his sisters".

On the day of TJ's funeral in Walgett, February 24, a solemn march against police violence was organised from the Block to Turanga apartments where TJ met with his fate, then on to Redfern police station where Lyall Munro, Kevin Smith, and Marcie Ella delivered a list of 17 demands for the enquiry into the young boy's death. Talking about the list of demands, the new ATSIC Chair for for the Sydney region Marcie Ella said,

"I think they express some key principles that Aboriginal people have been striving for for a long time and that's justice, it's to be treated fairly and it's to participate in those processes so that we can judge for ourselves that it's being dealt with in a fair and transparent way".

The number was a deliberate reminder of his age, and included demands that
- police vehicles involved be independently forensically examined
- officers involved be suspended from active duty in light of new witness testimony
- all enquiries have an independent Aboriginal observer
- Redfern Area Commander be asked who he took instruction from and liaised with in regard to police build up
in Lawson St throughout the Sunday afternoon BEFORE the riot
- enquiries look at the history of prior incidents involving police chases resulting in serious injuries to Aboriginal children
- the state provide the same funding for the enquiry into TJ's death as they plan to provide for the enquiry into the riot.

Speakers also called for a National Royal Commission into the treatment of Aboriginal children by police throughout Australia.

Family of TJ describe him as an agile little jockey on his bike. How a 10 minute round trip to get hot chips ended with his being impaled on a fence where he had no reason to be with broken glass in his fingers is still unclear. If police weren't chasing him, as they announced in a press statement, how were they first, second, third, and fourth on the scene? Witnesses say they watched police search him after the accident while he was still convulsing. Another said "I'm very sorry, I see police but I can't say anything - they deport me".

Even with a Coronial Enquiry justice is uncertain. Another Aboriginal martyr, 29 year old David Gundy's shooting death 15 years ago during an illegal police raid on his home, after an alleged tip from an unreliable informant, was officially put down to a lack of formal NSW police training on how to safely hold guns in confined spaces.

Some of the Block's teenagers stay with family in other parts of the city to avoid victimization. One 17 year old boy talked about being chased on his bike by police over a warrant still outstanding 2 weeks after he'd been released from interrogation at Redfern station, "then when I rode on the paddock, they come up on the paddock to cut me off from the lane. Then when I went to turn, he started ramming me and that...If the window was open they could have just pulled me in...my first instinct is to run from them. I don't want to get taken for something I didn't do." The vehicle ran over his bike after he'd jumped off and started running. The story is more disturbing for the fact that it happened 2 weeks before TJ's "accident".

Strip-searches are used to dehumanise new arrivals to concentration camps and jails, but they're also used at the roadside in Redfern. One 18 yr old male says, "all of us older blokes, over 18, they get strip-searched, y'know, ball-searched in the street", while other regulars to Redfern tell of seeing men and boys made to expose their genitals in public for police, and even of a pregnant Aboriginal strip-searched at the roadside surrounded by 5 police - presumably for the sake of her privacy...

"I think Bob Carr is probably one of the worst Premiers that we've ever had in New South Wales. This state has turned into a police state... What about the fact that this country is still illegal, it's based on terra nullius and today it's terror, and they've been terrorizing our people for over 200 years...it's never going to go away until this country deals with its (own) illegality...until the issue of Aboriginal sovereignty is dealt with it's always going to be like it is...Aboriginal people are treated like refugees in our own country...The only way this country's going to heal itself is when all the truths come out..."
- Isabel Coe, Aboriginal rights activist

Outside of Australia's detention centres and jails, only residents of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra experience the same level of 24-7 video surveillance as the Block, complete with close to 100 police patrols every day. When I visited senior Elder Joyce Ingram a week after the riot the neighborhood was calm, even welcoming. In the 15 minutes that we spent talking a paddy wagon cruised slowly past us maybe eight times with riot shields on clear display in the back window.

"They (activists in the past) fought for this tiny little bit of land here and it was given back to them by the people that owned it, Gough Whitlam passed it back to us, to indigenous Aborigines...Why not allow us indigenous Aborigines to have these two tiny little blocks of land here with decent houses, backyards and clotheslines, and for our children of the future they could say to their mates, 'and that's where we live,' and they'd walk with a little tiny bit of dignity and pride in themselves. And let them (government/ police/ media) give us a fair go. We're not here to bludge. We want to walk shoulder to shoulder with our, as they say, the white brothers...We don't want to be white. We know what colour we are. We wasn't born at 12 o'clock midday, we was born around 10, 10:30, 11 o'clock at night so that's how we've come to be indigenous Aborigines - (to her visitors) isn't that right?!"

The next day police without a warrant burst into and searched her home, apparently looking for someone in relation to the riot.

Despite having planned for years to develop the Block to provide affordable housing for the community, the Aboriginal Housing Commission is dependent on donations and in this way its effectiveness is limited by access to resources, just like the Aboriginal Legal Centre which frequently recommends that clients plea-bargain, rather than fighting charges outright. The recently announced RED plan will involve an outside development team and may yet end up being another real estate deal disguised as progress.
There are many first-hand accounts of under-age Aboriginal children being threatened, bashed, and even locked up with adult jail populations - whether suspects or not, such treatment can't be justified. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you treat somebody like a thief for long enough, threatening to hurt them next time you see them, stepping on them when you get a chance then eventually they're going to run like a bandit or steal to survive. Then you can point the finger and say that you were right about "them" the whole time.

Lyall Munro has been campaigning for better Aboriginal living conditions for years,

"We (people on the Block) come here everyday and watch the procession of police cars, we watch the intimidation and the trauma everyday that our young people are put through in this community in particular...". Community leader Kevin Smith called for wider community (that's you) pressure on elected officials to open doors for youngsters,
"there are programs that do need to be put in place that are positive - not just for Aboriginal children living on the street, but for all street-urchins that aren't given the opportunity, who aren't given the chance to achieve what they need to achieve."

Jenny Munro brought tears to eyes as she spoke of problems facing the Aboriginal nations right across Australia,

'The attitude of the police is what's wrong. They're taught to hate when they put their uniform on, they're taught to hate people who disregard and disobey them. There's something wrong with a system that teaches hate so freely and so easily on the most oppressed section of society - those of us that don't have the resources, don't have the money, don't have the land to be able to mount an effective fightback. We're oppressed because we're poor and they continue to keep us poor for the purpose of oppressing us! It's got to stop! In TJ's name, let it stop!"