Latest news with #IndigenousDeaths
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
More than 30 years after the royal commission, why are Indigenous Australians still dying in custody?
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died. The recent deaths in custody of two Indigenous men in the Northern Territory have provoked a deeply confronting question – will it ever end? About 597 First Nations people have died in custody since the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. This year alone, 12 Indigenous people have died – 31% of total custodial deaths. The raw numbers are a tragic indictment of government failure to implement in full the commission's 339 recommendations. We are potentially further away from resolving this crisis than we were 34 years ago. Kumanjayi White was a vulnerable young Warlpiri man with a disability under a guardianship order. He stopped breathing while being restrained by police in an Alice Springs supermarket on 27 May. His family is calling for all CCTV and body camera footage to be released. Days later a 68-year-old Aboriginal elder from Wadeye was taken to the Palmerston watchhouse after being detained for apparent intoxication at Darwin airport. He was later transferred to a hospital where he died. Both were under the care and protection of the state when they died. The royal commission revealed 'so many' deaths had occurred in similar circumstances and urged change. It found there was: Little appreciation of, and less dedication to, the duty of care owed by custodial authorities and their officers to persons in care. Seemingly, care and protection were the last things Kumanjayi White and the Wadeye elder were afforded by NT police. The royal commission investigated 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody between 1980 and 1989. If all of its recommendations had been fully implemented, lives may have been saved. For instance, recommendation 127 called for 'protocols for the care and management' of Aboriginal people in custody, especially those suffering from physical or mental illness. This may have informed a more appropriate and therapeutic response to White and prevented his death. Recommendation 80 provided for 'non-custodial facilities for the care and treatment of intoxicated persons'. Such facilities may have staved off the trauma the elder faced when he was detained, and the adverse impact it had on his health. More broadly, a lack of independent oversight has compromised accountability. Recommendations 29-31 would have given the coroner, and an assisting lawyer, 'the power to direct police' in their investigations: It must never again be the case that a death in custody, of Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal persons, will not lead to rigorous and accountable investigations. Yet, the Northern Territory police has rejected pleas by White's family for an independent investigation. Northern Territory Labor MP Marion Scrymgour is calling on the Albanese government to order a full audit of the royal commission recommendations. She says Indigenous people are being completely ostracised and victimised: People are dying. The federal government, I think, needs to show leadership. It is unlikely another audit will cure the failures by the government to act on the recommendations. Instead, a new standing body should be established to ensure they are all fully implemented. It should be led by First Nations people and involve families whose loved ones have died in custody in recognition of their lived expertise. In 2023, independent senator Lidia Thorpe moved a motion for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner to assume responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations. While the government expressed support for this motion, there has been no progress. Another mechanism for change would be for governments to report back on recommendations made by coroners in relation to deaths in custody. Almost 600 inquests have issued a large repository of recommendations, many of which have been shelved. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, recently conceded no government has 'done well enough' to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody. But he has rejected calls for an intervention in the Northern Territory justice system: I need to be convinced that people in Canberra know better than people in the Northern Territory about how to deal with these issues. Albanese is ignoring the essence of what is driving deaths in custody. Reflecting on the 25-year anniversary of the royal commission in 2016, criminology professor Chris Cunneen wrote that Australia had become much less compassionate and more ready to blame individuals for their alleged failings: Nowhere is this more clear than in our desire for punishment. A harsh criminal justice system – in particular, more prisons and people behind bars – has apparently become a hallmark of good government. There are too many First Nations deaths in custody because there are too many First Nations people in custody in the first place. At the time of the royal commission, 14% of the prison population was First Nations. Today, it's 36%, even though Indigenous people make up just 3.8% of Australia's overall population. Governments across the country have expanded law and order practices, police forces and prisons in the name of community safety. This includes a recent $1.5bn public order plan to expand policing in the Northern Territory. Such agendas impose a distinct lack of safety on First Nations people, who bear the brunt of such policies. It also instils a message that social issues can only be addressed by punitive and coercive responses. The royal commission showed us there is another way: self-determination and stamping out opportunities for racist and violent policing. First Nations families have campaigned for these issues for decades. How many more Indigenous deaths in custody does there have to be before we listen? Thalia Anthony professor of law at the University of Technology Sydney. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council Eddie Cubillo is a senior research fellow (Indigenous programs) at the University of Melbourne and is an independent representative on the Justice Policy Partnership under the Closing the Gap agreement. This article was originally published in the Conversation
ABC News
09-06-2025
- ABC News
Injustice ignored
Now to sad news in the Top End. SAMANTHA DICK: A family's heartache over the death in custody of a young Warlpiri man from Yuendumu now referred to as Kumanjayi White. NED HARGRAVES: Hear us, this cannot keep going - ABC News NT, 30 May 2025 Two weeks ago a 24-year-old intellectually disabled Aboriginal man died after being restrained by plain-clothes police in an Alice Springs supermarket. His awful death was the top story on the ABC's local news that night: OLIVANA LATHOURIS: … NT Police are investigating, with the Coles supermarket tonight shut to customers and declared a crime scene … - ABC News NT, 27 May 2025 It remains unclear as to what exactly occurred. Witnesses told The NT News a police officer had placed his 'knee behind the man's head' even as his friends called out a warning that he had a disability. The family have demanded the footage of the incident be released while police claim Kumanjayi White had assaulted a security guard who'd caught him caching items in his clothing. TRAVIS WURST: … the male behaved rather aggressively and was placed onto the ground by those police officers. He was later identified as losing consciousness … - ABC News NT, 27 May 2025 Kumanjayi White died 70 minutes later. Across Australia… there had already been 12 Indigenous deaths in custody in just the first five months of this year which is why the ABC has been absolutely right to give this story full-throated coverage, with developments in the case leading the Darwin news night after night as a family mourned and calls for an inquiry gathered pace: MALARNDIRRI McCARTHY: … an independent investigation may be warranted … - ABC News NT, 29 May 2025 KYLE DOWLING: Member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour also joined those calls today calling for Federal police officers to conduct the investigation … - ABC News NT, 4 June 2025 Meanwhile the despairing and the outraged joined rallies that moved from the top end to capital cities around the country. The ABC took the issue national, featuring it on its breakfast news program and both SBS and Sky News also recognised this story's importance including in its echoes of another death in custody. MATT CUNNINGHAM: … the man who was killed last week, or who died last week, is from Yuendumu, the same community where Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead in 2019 … - NewsDay, Sky News Australia, 2 June 2025 But the millions of Australians who rely on free-to-air commercial TV for their breakfast news and primetime evening bulletins have been left in the dark with not a whisper we could find of Kumanjayi White's brutal passing not on Sunrise not on Today and not on any of the main evening bulletins broadcast by all three commercial networks including Seven News in Melbourne and Ten News in Melbourne. And why have we singled out Victoria's capital? Because all last week both Seven and Ten beamed their Melbourne news into the Northern Territory having pulled the plug on their Darwin bulletin and Darwin bureaux years ago. Channel Nine which extinguished its Darwin bulletin only five months ago also missed the story even though it promised in February that it would: … retain a reporter and camera operator on the ground to tell the Territory's stories to a national audience. - Email, Nine spokesperson, 3 February 2025 Now it seems Nine is struggling to fulfil even this meagre commitment because we've confirmed its last staff reporter in the Territory has left and not been replaced. A spokesperson for Nine told us: Nine remains committed to finding a viable long-term solution for a news presence in the Northern Territory. As we evolve our business to reflect the commercial realities of newsgathering, we are working through resourcing and hope to have a resolution soon … - Email, Nine spokesperson, 9 June 2025 But might there be some positive news on the commercial television front? Because last month Seven announced it was acquiring TV licences from Southern Cross Media across a sweep of regional Australia including for South Australia far western NSW and yes for Darwin. Although it might also be worth noting that Seven West Media's press announcement contained no mention of any ambition to open new bureaux or tell more local stories. Instead, its focus was on: '… our valued advertising partners and media buyers will be able to seamlessly reach and target these new and attractive audiences …' - Seven West Media Press Release, 6 May 2025 How very heartening. Over the weekend and after we sent questions to the commercial networks, Seven and Ten developed an interest in Kumanjayi White's death with both networks publishing stories about his passing, the protests it prompted and about yet another Indigenous death in custody again in the NT recorded just 48 hours ago. On this program we examine poor journalism and lazy journalism but for the very many in the NT who rely on free-to-air commercial news the picture is even more troubling because they're getting very little journalism altogether not even about our most abiding national shame.
News.com.au
07-06-2025
- News.com.au
Nationwide rallies call for justice after death of Indigenous man in custody in the Northern Territory
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains reference to Indigenous people who have died. Australians across the country have flocked to the streets to demand justice following the death of an Indigenous man in police custody in the Northern Territory. A 24-year-old man was restrained by two police officers at an Alice Springs Coles on May 27. Police said there had been reports of an altercation between the man and a security guard. He stopped breathing while on the ground at the shopping centre, and he died about an hour after he was restrained, the NT News reported. There have been 12 Indigenous deaths in custody this year, while there have been 597 since the establishment of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1987. A string of rallies have been planned across the country following the 24-year-old's death, demanding an investigation independent of the NT Police force, for CCTV and body cam footage to be released to the man's family, and a public apology from NT Police. Crowds gathered outside Town Hall in Sydney's CBD on Saturday night, holding up Indigenous flags. Signs printed with 'Stop black deaths in custody' were also held up among the large crowd. Police could be seen on horseback at the protest. Lawyer George Newhouse, representing the man's family, said he was 'angry there are mothers grieving' in the Northern Territory, according to reports by the ABC. 'I am angry there was a disabled young man calling out for his mother in Coles last week,' Mr Newhouse told the crowd. An organiser of the Sydney rally, Paul Silva, called for justice in a post to Instagram. 'We demand truth. We demand accountability. We demand justice,' Mr Silva posted. Independent senator Lidia Thorpe called for justice for the 24-year-old in a post to X on Friday. 'Justice for Warlpiri Mob, and the Yuendumu community, who are grieving yet another young man's life taken,' Ms Thorpe wrote. 'No one should live in fear of being killed by police and in prisons.'
