MEDIA RELEASE: Deaths in Custody must end. Government must act.
Racism cuts to the bone. The violence of the silence that systemically supports racism and bleeds compassion out of humanity demoralises our brothers and sisters, those disenfranchised and those downtrodden. When will our national identity stop denying its racist layers?
A man found death melted to the hot metal floor of the inside of the back of a prisoner transport van. Warburton Elder Mr Ward died in temperatures reaching past 50 degrees of heat. Two and half years later there has been little remedy, and the cries for justice worn out by the ears that had been listening.
Some of society and many groups have uttered their undeniable outrage at the never before seen horrific nature of this particular death. Finally many more people have argued for the flicker of hope to stare us back from the horizon and for us to meet and create a more just society. Why has it taken such a graphic depiction of injustice, wrong-doing and vile disregard for a human being for us to ask questions of how we treat one another?
There are many deaths in custody, most of them our Aboriginal brothers and sisters. Somewhere in Australia an Aboriginal person has died in custody each month of the last 18 months.
If the revered Elder Mr Ward had been the offspring of elderly residents of Peppermint Grove I assure, believe you me, justice would have been served. G4S, Corrective Services and the criminal justice system would have been brought to account, to an education, and to hefty payouts.
The fact that it has taken such a horrific death for many West Australians to finally take some notice of how we treat one another is something we should really think about. We are all brothers and sisters. For those of us who have felt the wrath of racism every inaction in remedying wrongs is salt to our deepest wounds.
We need a Commission into why recommendations from the 1991 Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody have not been enabled.
Media Contact:
Gerry Georgatos, Senate Candidate WA
Kurdungurlu of the pending Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal Party, pending First Nations Political Party
0430 657 309, gerry_georgatos@yahoo.com.au
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