Violence towards Aboriginal children, and including sexual violence against girls, we know was central to colonisation and remains ongoing today.
Children were 'indentured' as slave labour in West Australia under 'native welfare' laws, stolen from families and subjected to abuse and violence, as well as denied education and human rights.
Today, Aboriginal children bear the brunt of racism through the criminal justice system where it's been condoned with children as young as ten being criminalised. The past genocidal laws have been repealed but we wonder, especially when we witness attacks on young Aboriginal girls by police, how much has really changed?
Many people are concerned, distressed and even angered by the video circulating and reported on by the National Indigenous Times of a young girl, just 13 years old, being physically and violently treated by an adult man on the Yanchep/Joondalup train line last Sunday.
This young girl was on the train with a friend when a group of boys got on and began harassing them, taking their accessories, their jewellery, from them. She tried to retrieve her goods when she was suddenly attacked by a man who put his hand directly on her chest. Shocked at this she reacted and was then flung onto the train floor. Next she was thrown into a seat, and he kneed her in the groin area and she can be heard calling out that he is in fact making physical contact in this shocking manner.
Her friend and other passengers can be heard on the video voicing concern she is being treated so violently. At this stage we know he is an off-duty police officer who provides his badge number, and continues to restrain in her in this manner, claiming he's been the 'victim'. This officer and colleagues then lay charges against the child who's had to receive medical treatment including x-rays because of his violent treatment of her.
Nobody is questioning an officer has the right to use due force where it's warranted but here we witness an Aboriginal girl targeted and assaulted by a non-Aboriginal male police officer who has used force in a highly inappropriate, arguably indecent manner.
The WA Police Commissioner has a clear obligation to stand down the officer based on the video evidence and pending an urgent investigation. Failure to do so makes a mockery of their historic apology for the 'past' treatment of Aboriginal people and recent efforts to engage Aboriginal people including Mechelle Turvey to leadership roles.
This violent incident occurred in the same week as the 35th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and the recent death of 35 year old Noongar mum Patty Howell at Bandyup women's maximum-security prison.
As a girl growing up Patty had experienced severe family violence and sexual assault and had a recent stroke when she was incarcerated for minor public order offending. Her mother Priscilla said she was told by relatives of other inmates that Patty called for help and received none before she passed.
We held a candlelight vigil in memory of Patty outside Bandyup on the roadside, acknowledging this violent long-standing violent treatment of Aboriginal women by the state, and including mass incarceration. It is a fact that Aboriginal women in WA are the most incarcerated group of people in the world, showing the past genocidal practices continue.
At this very same time, the UN Early Warning and Urgent Action communication on the treatment of Aboriginal children and youth is being considered in Geneva. We are calling on the UN Committee on Race Discrimination to find that Australia is breaching the binding Convention on the Elimination of Race Discrimination which prohibits all forms of racial discrimination including through discriminatory laws and practices.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and the Aboriginal ALP caucus, have turned their backs on requests for a national summit on youth justice. They want us to believe that Closing the Gap is somehow an answer to violent racist conduct of state and territory governments.
This government has forgotten the 1967 referendum where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, supported by a majority of voters, wanted the federal government to show responsibility and leadership in Aboriginal affairs in the face of widespread discriminatory conduct by state and territory governments.
Today we can see that Aboriginal people, even our children, are abandoned to negotiate racist violence from the state, police and the legal system.
Compare this to the conduct of WAPOL in arresting the non-Aboriginal man responsible for throwing an actual bomb into a crowd of Aboriginal people in Boorloo on January 26. In clear contrast, he was very politely treated - and had his identity supressed by the court for some time.
Premier Roger Cook, this kind of hypocrisy and violence must end. Don't talk to us about 'Truth telling' and your commitment against racist violence and hate while our children are being targeted and when a blind eye is turned and excuses are made by police to justify it. Your apology at Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) for the incarceration of our old people must be actioned into structural reforms to dismantle state violence and criminalisation of Aboriginal people.
Nothing less will do, we're tired of government's broken promises and empty words while our children are being so violently abused.
