Feature

by Ray Jackson, President, Indigenous Social Justice Association it is with an ongoing sense of horror and disbelief that thanks to ms. pc i have been made aware of yet another gaol death of a young Aboriginal man in Borallon Gaol in Queensland on 27 october, 2011. The unnamed young man, from Mt. Isa, was only 25 or 26 (reports differ as to his age) when he was found dead in his gaol cell at 0915 and gaol staff (officers/nurses/a doctor perhaps?) proceeded with CPR until the ambulance arrived and pronounced him deceased at 0952.

Protesters who are peacefully assembled at the Treasury Gardens as ‘Occupy Melbourne’ are currently resisting (potentially unlawful) harassment by officers from the City of Melbourne and Victoria Police. The Australian Services Union (servicing Melbourne City Council workers) has called the Council actions “abhorrent”; is not imposing bans but will discuss the matter at its next executive meeting. Protesters earlier today asked people to get to the Treasury Gardens as soon as possible to help them resist this arbitrary abuse of state power.

A group of participants in Occupy Melbourne have resisted eviction at the State Library and are camping out tonight in what is being called a re-occupation.

Occupy Melbourne met at 12pm on the 29th of October at State Library, and went to Treasury Gardens and Bowen Place, where both were consecutively decided as unsafe to occupy. The second General Assembly of the day voted to return to State Library and attempt a reoccupation.

Update: WTF happened at Occupy Melbourne on Saturday?
Blogs - Raili Simojoki: Occupy Melbourne – consensus decision-making and public space | Mike Stuchberry's report | Benevolent Menticide - Some thoughts on Direct Democracy in Action | immediateworldwidedereification - Leaflet handed out at rally | WSWS coverage of the day

Gerry Georgatos Australia has one of the worlds' worst deaths in custody records - prison and police custodial - however this country's social wealth is envied by most of the rest of the world. Therefore, how is it possible that Australia, with its social wealth, perpetrate the most horrific statistics in terms of custodial deaths, in terms of the rate of deaths and in terms of crude totals? How is it that the Aboriginal peoples of this nation are disproportionately borne with the brunt of deaths in custody and borne with disproportionately wild incarceration rates? Aboriginal incarceration rates are five times the rate when compared with apartheid South Africa, and West Australia's Aboriginal incarceration rates are eight times the rate when compared with apartheid South Africa. In any other country these types of targeted incarceration and deaths in custody rates would have led to a civil war or en masse confrontations.