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The Redfern riot: January 14, 2004

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Rioters set fire to a train station and pelted police officers with gasoline bombs in an Aborigine neighborhood here during a nine-hour street battle that began after a teenager died, reportedly while being chased by officers.

The rioting in the district, Redfern, left 40 officers injured and highlighted continuing tensions between Aborigines and the authorities.

The unrest followed the death of a 17-year-old Aborigine, Thomas Hickey, who was impaled on a fence when he fell from his bicycle. His mother said officers were chasing the youth, which the police deny.

• Redfern, 90 days after the eruption
  May 16, 2004 - On a hot Sunday night three months ago, the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern erupted in fury for nine long hours. It wasn't the first time and it probably won't be the last. But the raw intensity of the February 15 riot, its graphic portrayal in the media and its synonymity with the death of 17-year-old Thomas "TJ" Hickey guaranteed it would not be swept under the carpet.
  • Carr blamed for failing Redfern youth on drugs
  • Police ill-equipped to handle Redfern riot
  • Police get riot blame
  • More riots in Redfern, inquiry told
• TJ Hickey and the plight of young Aboriginal Australians
  6 May 2004 - World Socialist Web Site - Less than three months after the death of seventeen-year-old Aboriginal boy Thomas “TJ” Hickey on February 14 this year, the Australian media has virtually buried the issue. To the extent it is even referred to, it is portrayed as a tragic and unfortunate accident, with no wider social significance.
• Aborigines to demand royal commission into youth policing
  March 24, 2004 - Aboriginal groups will march on NSW Parliament House today to call for a national royal commission into the policing of indigenous youth. They also want a NSW royal commission into the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey, who died last month after falling off his bike and becoming impaled on a metal fence.
  • TJ's mother makes plea for justice
  • Police hold Redfern in 'state of siege', Pilger tells rally
  • Demonstrators go out, demolishers go in
  • Tell the World
  • Notice to the Australian Government and the People of Australia
• Redfern meeting denounces racist police violence
  March 10, 2004 - “The views of the Aboriginal community in general, and residents of the Redfern Block in particular, have fallen on deaf ears since the death of TJ [Thomas Hickey]", Redfern Aboriginal leader Lyall Munro told a meeting of 100 people at the South Sydney Leagues Club, organised by the Socialist Alliance, on March 4.
  • Redfern Block community defiant
• Lyall Munro - Spokesman for the Hickey family and the Redfern 'Block' community
  9 March 2004 - Mr Munro on behalf of the Hickey family and the "Block" community of Redfern today called on the Aboriginal community and their supporters across Australia to unite and support the demand for a National Royal Commission to examine police mistreatment of Aboriginal youth Australia-wide.
• Journalist sacked over Redfern report
  March 5, 2004 - A US journalist who made up the source for a disparaging quote about Aborigines in a report on last month's Redfern riots has been sacked by his paper.
  • Le Net épie l'éthique de la presse - Libération
• Church helps soothe Australia's Aborigines
  4 March 2004 - Ekklesia (UK) - The race riots in Australia's biggest city, Sydney, have focused attention on the role of the Church in helping to heal the country's fractured indigenous community reports the BBC. Dozens of police officers were injured in last month's confrontation in the inner-city district of Redfern. The violence was sparked by the death of an Aboriginal teenager, which is the subject of three investigations.
• Church helps soothe Australia's Aborigines
  March 4, 2004 - BBC - The race riots in Australia's biggest city, Sydney, have focused attention on the role of the Church in helping to heal the country's fractured indigenous community.
• Racist police email blasted as 'filth and disgust'
  March 4, 2004 - Senior NSW police apologised today for an email containing racist slurs against Aboriginal people which was found circulating in stations in the state's west. The contents of the email, found in four regional stations including the troubled towns of Bourke and Dubbo, were described as "filth and disgust" by Deputy Commissioner David Madden.
• The Redfern Block vs developer greed
  March 3, 2004 - The attacks on Redfern are occurring in the context of a big push for more inner-city private redevelopment. Housing prices have been escalating in the inner-city for more than a decade. The creeping privatisation of public housing has been contributing to the fragmentation of long-standing communities.
• Why Australia is not all cuddly koalas
  February 29, 2004 - Aljazeera - Little J says the best thing about the Redfern race riots is that they were beamed around the world on satellite television. "They saw us," he said. "People around the world, who just think about Australia as a nice place with kangaroos and beaches and sport - now, they know the Aboriginal people are angry. And if they think we are going to lay down and do nothing, just because the police tell us to, they have got another thing coming."
• Different treatment may have led to riot, says PM
  February 27, 2004 - Prime Minister John Howard has suggested that the Redfern riot was partly the result of a policy of treating the indigenous community differently to the rest of Australia. Mr Howard said the riot arose from a combination of factors including a "total breakdown in family authority within Aboriginal communities".
  • Redfern leader says PM out of touch
  • PM accused of racism over Hickey
• List of demands in relation to the enquires into the death of TJ Hickey
  February 24, 2004 - Handed to police on the day of TJ's funeral - by The Block Community & supporters.
• TJ Hickey remembered
  February 24, 2004 - A funeral has been held in northern NSW for the Aboriginal teenager Thomas Hickey, whose death sparked Sydney's Redfern riot. The young man's family had appealed to mourners to remain calm and the funeral in the town of Walgett went ahead peacefully.
• An Aboriginal Boy Dies, Chased by Cops: This Week in Redfern
  February 22, 2004 - Counterpunch (USA) - There is a boy dead in a city morgue. A teenager. Thomas "TJ" Hickey. Dead at 17. How do you write about death? About riots? About an issue no-one in power seems to want resolved?
• 'If you oppress people long enough, things will erupt. Riots will happen'
  February 22, 2004 - The Observer (UK) - David Fickling reports from Sydney's downtrodden Aboriginal quarter, where the death of a teenager has sparked Australia's worst race violence.
• Amanda Vanstone: The political quick fix is not the solution to Aboriginal problems
  February 20, 2004 - The problems facing indigenous Australia are many and varied. And they are very long term. They did not happen overnight and they will not be solved quickly. There is no magic wand. I don't say that to thwart the hopes of indigenous Australians who want improvements and want them soon. Nor do I say it as an excuse for turning a blind eye to current events.
• Australia's Enduring Shame
  February 19, 2004 - New Statesman (UK) - John Pilger: Australia, like white South Africa, has a deeply racist history of dispossession and cruelty, buttressed by "the law". But even history is a battleground, in which "revisionists" - the likes of Keith Windschuttle, a self-publishing and much-publicised "new historian" - can suggest that Tasmanian Aborigines lacked humanity and compassion. Not anywhere in the world with indigenous populations, not in North America, New Zealand, even South Africa, could you get away with such a slur.
• Fred Chaney: The lessons of Redfern
  February 19, 2004 - The warning signs about Redfern were already apparent in the early 1980s. What had seemed a good idea at the time was not producing the kind of outcomes we had anticipated. All of us, white and black, who were involved over that period should feel a sense of personal responsibility for not asking some of the hard questions or being sufficiently critical of our own well-meaning efforts, and those of successive governments.
• No easy answer to the Block's plight
  February 19, 2004 - Bring in the bulldozers is the solution that John Brogden favours for the problem that is the Block ... For the moment, redevelopment of Redfern, and of the Block in particular, has to be done in a way that is sensitive to its political and historical significance. It cannot be as simple as kicking out the residents, bulldozing the place and allowing developers to take over. Besides, the last thing that Sydney needs is yet another enclave of bland yuppiedom.
• Aden Ridgeway: Boiling point after a decade of tension
  February 18, 2004 - I do not excuse the events of that night. But they come as no surprise to me or any person who is familiar with the volatile dynamics of Redfern, and the wider issues of indigenous politics in this country.
• 'Violence damages the Aboriginal cause': The Australian papers respond to the clashes
  February 18, 2004 - The Guardian (UK)
• Disregarded and dispossessed
  February 17, 2004 - Guardian (UK) - The message given out by government is perfectly clear: comfortably-off white Australians who feel their culture is being threatened by the country's modest refugee intake must have their views respected, even to the point of driving children to depression and self-harm in outback concentration camps. However, poor black Australians who feel their culture has been destroyed by 200 years of dispossession should just buck their ideas up and get over it.
• 'Alcohol, heat, grief triggered the riot'
  February 17,2004 - The Premier, Bob Carr, and the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, have blamed alcohol, grief over a boy's death and the unrelenting heat for the Redfern Aboriginal riot and announced three inquiries into the rampage.
  • Ongoing tensions helped fuel riot, academic says
  • No excuses can exonerate Redfern riot
• Chased or not, TJ had reasons to run
  February 17,2004 - Within a few days of his arrival, say his mother, aunt Virginia and uncle Michael West, he was beaten up in a mistaken identity arrest by a group of police in the Block, a claim police would not comment on yesterday.
  • Back on Eveleigh Street it's still us versus them
  • Despair the reality for a race lost in the alien space of Redfern
  • Violence blamed on 'softly-softly' approach
  • Rage, boredom and peer pressure fuel Redfern's youthful violence
  • School system has let down many boys like TJ
• Black leaders lay the blame on politicians
  February 17, 2004 - Indigenous leaders yesterday accused state and federal governments of failing to tackle the problems faced by young Aborigines living in the suburb they called a "national embarrassment".
• Race, riots and an Australian national disgrace
  February 17, 2004 - Independent (UK) - Editorial: There will be no substantial improvement as long as white Australians and the country's political leaders refuse to recognise the state of race relations fort the national disgrace it is. The best that could come out of the 2004 Redfern riot is that it could give an impetus to change.
• Aussie riot fuelled by long history of repression
  February 17, 2004 - Independent (UK) -- Politicians and community leaders have appealed for calm after an unparalleled night of rioting in inner-city Sydney.
• Eleven years later, and promises have done little for the people living in the Block
  February 17, 2004 - Guardian (UK) - In December 1992 the then Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, made a startling speech in which he promised a future of renewal for Aboriginal Australia. Standing five minutes' walk away from the site of the weekend's riots in Redfern, he admitted that the country had failed the Aboriginal people.
• Aborigines riot over boy's death
  February 17, 2004 - Telegraph (UK) and more - Peace was restored yesterday to an inner-city area of Sydney set ablaze by rioters in some of the worst racial violence for a decade.
  • Uneasy calm follows Sydney riots - BBC
  • Australia's lost generation - BBC
  • Aboriginal Leader Warns of More Violence - Reuters
  • Australian riot throws the spotlight on Aboriginal despair - AP
  • Aborigines' deep anger - AFP
  • Sydney mourns Aboriginal teen - BBC
  • Redfern, Sydney szégyenfoltja - Népszabadság Online
  • Les émeutes du quartier aborigène de Sydney ébranlent toute l'Australie - Le Monde
  • Emeutes après la mort d'un jeune en Australie - Libération
• Lack of Accountability on Redfern Embarrasses Nation
  February 16, 2004 - ATSIC - The problems have long been documented — it is now well past the time for state and federal governments to act to make a real difference to this and other communities in turmoil.
• The politics of Redfern's Block
  February 16 , 2004 - There are now to be several inquiries into Thomas Hickey's death, and into the subsequent riot that surrounded it, but today the politics of dealing with the social issues of the Block took centre stage, with New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, saying that he had full confidence in how the police dealt with the events of last night. Meanwhile NSW Opposition leader, John Brogden, has suggested clearing the area out altogether.
• Exclusive interview with the block residents
  February 16 2004 - "Remember in the paper and that when they said about one hundred and fifty Blacks pelted police with stones and bottles and that there? Well when they chased the young fella into the house there was a baby laying on the bed. The police stepped all over the baby. That's why they fuckin' bottled them fuckin' coppers. They do everything the wrong way. Bringing the riot squad down after ten year old boys, you know what I mean, that's wrong."
  Mother angry over son's death
  16 February , 2004 - I was terrified and that. Wild and that. I wanted to go up to the police station and smash the police station up, that's how wild I was. My 17-year old boy was just coming down to get money off his mother and then these dogs here, fucking end up killing my son. How does a fucking 17-year old boy end up on the fucking fence?
• "They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening"
  February 16 2004 - We've got to let our frustrations out and that's the only way we see fit to. They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening. Aboriginal people are peaceful people but (if) they push our buttons, mate we will go to the point where if they're going to shed blood so will we."
• Aborigines' Protest in Sydney Leaves 40 Injured
  February 16, 2004 - AP and more - Rioters set fire to a train station and pelted police officers with gasoline bombs in an Aborigine neighborhood here during a nine-hour street battle on Monday that began after a teenager died, reportedly while being chased by officers.
  • Uroligheder i Sydney - DR Nyheder
  • Australia's simmering racial tensions - CNN
  • Sydney riots over Aborigine death - BBC
  • Sydney police investigate Aboriginal death - The Times
  • Riots in Sydney - Channel Four News
  • Dead boy sparks race riots - The Sun
• Redfern riots a 'tragedy for all': Mick Mundine
  February 16,2004 - I suppose it's got a history you know. It's been very bad between our people and the police because they really gave our people a really hard time in the early '70s, '80s, they were really very vicious in them days.
• Racist police raid on Redfern
  January 17, 2002 - More than 40 police stormed the predominantly Aboriginal Eveleigh Street, Redfern, in a military style raid on the night of January 14.

• Flame of Freedom burns in Victoria Park
  Since it's inception, the Australian government has had an ignominious reputation when indigenous people are concerned. It is becoming clear to the white population of this country that we do indeed have a lot to answer for.
• Fixed Race
  Sydney has a large Aboriginal ghetto, Redfern, just a five-minute limo drive away from the centre. It is easily distinguished from the rest of the city by an oppressive police presence.
• Aborigine fury as 'false image' sells Olympics
  Few of the Olympic officials or volunteers are indigenous, and Aborigines are rarely seen in Sydney's central business district. The city's small Aborigine community keeps a low profile in the dilapidated inner city suburb of Redfern, far from any Olympic sporting venue.
• G'bye to g'days
  The country's 400,000 Aborigines are often demonised as drunks and drug addicts staggering around the Redfern slums in central Sydney, or stigmatised as welfare fatcats riding around the outback in Toyota Landcruisers.

• Australian Launch of the International Year for the World's Indigenous People
  10 December 1992 - Speech given by the then Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating, at Redfern Park in Sydney. "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me? "
  
  

external links

• Issues relating to Redfern/Waterloo
  Current Parliamentary Inquiry. Conducted by the Social Issues (Legislative Council Committee). This Inquiry was referred by the House on 26 February 2004. The Committee is required to table an interim report by 31 July 2004 and a final report by 30 November 2004.
• The Redfern Block community website
  'This site is being constantly reweaved as more energy is shared'
• Redfern Church Mouse
  7 March2004 - Catholic Telecommunications - Sadly the recent violent confrontation between NSW police and Sydney's Redfern aboriginal community is being paralleled in St Vincent's Catholic parish, with the increasingly ugly standoff between parish priest Fr Gerry Prindiville of the Neocatechumenate Movement, and the largely aboriginal community that had long been held together by the legendary former parish priest Fr Ted Kennedy. The conflict has caused violence both to the Eucharist and to the integrity of the shared faith on which the community is built. This site, which tells one side of the story, should be looked at in conjunction with Cardinal Pell's vision for the role of the Neocatechumenal Way in the renewal of the Archdiocese.

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