Racist Authorities Forced to Back Off a Bit After Outrage in Western Sydney at Persecution of Aboriginal Family
… But Rich People’s Legal System Still Shows its Injustice
October 20 – There were smiles yesterday in a court-room in Parramatta and lots of relief. “Tisha” (Letisha) Hickey had been through an ordeal. However, she was acquitted of all the trumped up but serious charges that were placed on her and six of her relatives and friends following her own twenty-first birthday party 13 months earlier. Police had used the pretext of allegedly excessive noise at Tisha’s party to raid her Riverstone home and violently attack occupants.
Since the initial raid, Tisha, her mother, siblings and cousins have faced ongoing police harassment because she and the other defendants defiantly refused to plead guilty to what they never did. In a recent, particularly chilling act of intimidation on September 28, police stormed into the family home and bullied and abused Tisha, her mother, younger brother and cousin. They even flung around Tisha’s ten year-old baby sister!
During the original raid on Tisha’s party, police were particularly brutal against Tisha herself – leaving her with bruises on her stomach, arms and legs. Yet police then hit her with amongst the greatest number of – and most serious of the – charges of all those arrested. The courts also slapped her and other defendants with harsh bail conditions.
If this is an all too typical scenario of how the Australian state “relates to” Aboriginal and poor, working-class people, what followed was not. You see family members at Tisha’s party cleverly took video and photographs of the police attack. A year ago at a private lunch with Palm Island Aboriginal resistance leader Lex Wotton, hosted by the Maritime Union of Australia Sydney Branch, for those actively involved in the campaign to free Wotton, the family showed the video and photographs to the trade unionists and activists present at the gathering. Then in mid-January 2011, in a coordinated blitz, the video and photographs of the police attack were posted on several Internet sites along with a detailed account of the incident. They provoked widespread outrage at the police actions from anti-racists and opponents of state repression. A comrade of ours also translated the story into Chinese and a posting on a Chinese language website went semi-viral in China, where the population has not forgotten the humiliation their ancestors suffered at the hands of Western colonial powers in China’s pre-1949 days and where youth are angered at the hypocrisy of Western states that unfairly attack China’s supposed “human rights” problems.
The video and photographs taken by the family had a powerful impact on those who saw them because they were so compelling. The video footage clearly shows police provoking the incident when the sergeant in charge of the operation provocatively steps forward into the face of Tisha’s cousin, Jade Hickey, and then outrageously demands, “Get out of my face!” When he tries to defuse the situation by saying “no one is in your face” and retreats, the cop shoves him aggressively. Meanwhile, one of the photographs taken even shows a filthy male cop lifting up Tisha’s skirt and inappropriately touching her.
The mid-January internet release of the video, photographs and write-up was soon followed by an on the streets agitation campaign. This gained particular resonance in working class Western Sydney. This was especially so amongst the most economically deprived sections of the community and amongst non-white ethnic” youth – both of whom are groups often suffering persecution from police themselves. Eventually even mainstream newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian were forced to report on the case.
The racist authorities were well aware of the support that the Riverstone Hickey family was gaining. As a result the courts had to back off somewhat from their persecution of the family in a way that is highly unusual for a legal system notorious for its discrimination against Aboriginal people and its ritual defence of police attacks against non-white people and the poor in any cases that have political significance. In the end, not only was Tisha acquitted but the magistrate ruled that the police should never have arrested her. Furthermore the magistrate was compelled to note that the police response to the (alleged) noise complaint was confrontational.
Today, the other four adult defendants were also acquitted of the most serious charge of “affray.” However they were each convicted of one or two minor charges like resisting a police officer and
use of offensive language. Their penalties ranged from – at the top end – a 12 month good behaviour bond to – at the bottom end – no penalty. They are likely to appeal the convictions. Meanwhile the two children who were arrested with them have had their trials at the Children’s Courts adjourned until next month. We must all demand that charges against the two children be dropped and that those convictions of the adults that did go through are quashed.
That some of the defendants received any conviction at all instead of the violent police that attacked them is disgusting. It once again confirms the racist, anti-working class bias in Australia’s “justice” system.
Nevertheless, a year ago, the police would have thought that they would face no obstacle to sending to jail members of this Aboriginal family that they are persecuting in Outer Western Sydney. And they would never have expected what happened yesterday. Not only was Tisha acquitted of all charges but the police side was forced to pay costs such that Tisha ended up with nearly $10,000. Although she should have received much, much more compensation than this for all she suffered during the police raid, as should have the other defendants, the fact is that under this unjust legal system it is very rare for the police prosecution to be forced to pay up. So clearly the racist authorities were pushed back. This is significant especially when one considers how biased the legal system is and how determined the police were to crush the family and intimidate them from any effort to fight the charges.
That the police received this setback is not due to any particular fairness in the magistrate. The magistrates are all very, well-paid pillars of the current society and capitalist system with all its prejudices and bias. This magistrate was no exception. The most telling indication of this was when she in her verdict ruled that the police officer who provoked the incident by aggressively pushing Jade Hickey … had not acted unlawfully or improperly!
The only reason that the police did not end up getting what they wanted in this case is because the authorities were aware of how widely known were the accounts of the police’s actions at Tisha’s 21st and how much anger that had provoked. They feared that imposing harsh sentences would lead to more agitation and campaigning to expose police violence.
With growing population of aging people and life becoming full of risks, demands of physiotherapy assistants and occupational sildenafil viagra generico professionals are on a rise. Drug-induced impotence: It also happens that the flow of blood to free levitra samples your penile regions is blocked by the Enzyme called as PDE5. To begin with, viagra soft tablets is easily identified by its blue, diamond tablets. These manufactures are known as generic manufacturers.Generic medications of order levitra online as offers like levitra help customers to avail discounts of up to 45% on bulk purchases. By courageously publicizing the accounts of the police attack on them, the Riverstone family has done a favour to not only themselves but to everyone who is a target for police violence. Their determined stand allowed an on-the streets campaign to develop that combined defence of the persecuted family with more general opposition to racist and anti-working class police violence. On the morning of the start of the trial of the adult defendants on May 23, over 40 Aboriginal people, trade unionists, leftists and other anti-racists rallied outside the Parramatta Court to demand “Drop All Charges Against Those Arrested At Tisha’s 21st. Stop Persecuting the Aboriginal Hickey Family! Down With Racist Police Attacks!” Referring to the police attack on Tisha’s 21st party, demonstrators chanted “Cops were the rioters – Drop the charges now!” The demonstration was extensively reported on Channel Ten News as well as being mentioned on ABC Radio and most of the major newspapers. Then on October 16, nearly twice the number of people as in the first rally participated in an action in Parramatta Mall based on the same slogans as the May 23 protest. This despite the important Occupy Sydney protests taking place in the city at the same time.
The leaflet used for building the October 16 demonstration emphasised that the police in Australia serve “the big end of town only” and insisted that in standing for the dropping of charges against those arrested at Tisha’s 21st , “We will also make clear our opposition to police violence – violence that is especially aimed against Aboriginal people but which also targets other non-white communities, anti-racist activists, the poor and striking workers manning picket lines.” This call found a resonance in working class Western Sydney and most of the rally participants were from Aboriginal and “ethnic” communities or from low-income sections of society. The theme was further reinforced in the speeches by the emcee at both protests, Bowie Hickey, a cousin of Tisha’s mother. Thus while she powerfully asked, are the Hickeys the only people in this country not allowed to have a 21st party, Bowie Hickey also stressed the need for people of all colours to stand together as people against police violence. This the protesters certainly did as they chanted: “Smash cop attacks, On workers, Asians, Arabs and Blacks!”
The authorities really feared the linking together of all those targeted by their racist, rich people’s system. As protest organizers arrived for the October 16 rally … the police threatened to ban the demonstration! The police used as their pretext a bogus “condition” (requiring rally organizers to take out public liability insurance) that police had sent in the very fine print to the organizers – on the evening before the protest (!) – in an Email sneakily disguised under the heading “Approval in relation to Hickey Protest.” Eventually as more demonstrators arrived police had to back off. They then spent the next few hours glumly watching as the spirited demonstration loudly showed their support for Tisha’s mother, Patricia Hickey, as she powerfully exposed what the police had been doing to her family. The police also saw a large stream of passers-by stop by the rally to pick up leaflets and to watch a big screen showing video footage of the police assault on Tisha 21st . By the end of the demonstration, the police, and you can bet soon after, the prosecutors, court authorities, upper bureaucrats and politicians whom the police were no doubt (directly or indirectly) in touch with, would have realized that socially aware sections of Western Sydney’s masses were not going to let them get away with harsh sentences on the defendants. They knew that they were going to have to make some concessions.
Why Australia’s Police Act the Way They Do?
For the Western Sydney, working class youth so used to copping police harassment without being in any way able to challenge it, participating in the October 16 action was an empowering experience. Importantly, they participated in an event that attempted to give a systematic understanding of why unjust attacks by police take place. There were various exact explanations given to this question at the rally, as this was a united-front demonstration in which a variety of groups and individuals opposed to racist and anti-poor police violence spoke at or otherwise participated in the event. The first speakers at the protest were rally chair Bowie Hickey and then Patricia Hickey. As well as being actively built on the streets of Western Sydney by Trotskyist Platform supporters, the October 16 and earlier May 23 rally was also publicized by the Indigenous Social Justice Association, Supporters of the Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerillas, Indigenous Social Justice Association – Melbourne Supporters Group, Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, Justice Action and from individuals active around the anarchist Black Rose centre. Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia both sent a representative to participate in each of the rallies and Iranian left groups, Komalah and Worker Communist Party of Iran also each sent a representative to participate in one or other of the demonstrations.
This is how Trotskyist Platform chairman Sarah Fitzenmeyer, a key rally organizer, explained police tyranny in her speech at the October 16 protest:
“Here in Australia, Aboriginal people suffer the worst of police discrimination. But Western suburbs Arab, Asian and African youth are also hit with racist cop attacks. And poor people of whatever colour can also suffer police tyranny. Look at how cops always side with the greedy landlords and real estate agents when they go to kick out poor tenants struggling with their rent. Indeed the main role of the police, the courts, the prisons and the rest of the Australian state is to enforce the rule of the rich capitalists. That is why the system has tried to jail several building workers, like Ark Tribe, simply because they dared to stand up for union rights. And all this continues whether the state is administered by the Liberals or by a Labor/Greens coalition.
“The racism of the authorities is inevitable because their role is to protect the ruling class. A ruling class that promotes racism to divide and conquer those that it exploits.”
Sarah then outlined a strategy of mobilising the working class against racist state violence:
“Our struggles must be linked to the union movement – because that movement has real power- the power to shutdown production and thus hurt the profits of the corporate bigwigs who run this society. We saw that in the campaign to free Lex Wotton, the heroic leader of the Palm Island resistance against the police murder of Mulrunji Doomadgee. At the culmination of a years-long activist campaign, MUA dock workers stopped work in ports across Sydney in support of Lex on the day he was being sentenced in November 2008. As a result he received a much lighter sentence than the authorities wanted – although of course he should never have spent a day in jail.”
Yet in laying out this perspective, the Trotskyist Platform speaker also noted that there is an obstacle to such struggle which must be knocked down – the presence of police in the trade unions. This problem has become more apparent during the crucial struggle of NSW public sector workers against attacks by the O’Farrell state government – where the Police Association has been joining the workers rallies. As our comrade insisted:
“It is a travesty that the Police Association is allowed to be part of the Unions NSW. Police are not real workers but the enforcers of the bosses exploitation of workers. Just imagine an Aboriginal worker at a rally seeing the very same cop who brutalized someone from their family the previous week joining in the demonstration, or how a construction worker feels if standing beside him at a protest is one of the cops who attacked his picket line. Cops should not be welcome at union rallies. The Police Association must be booted out of Unions NSW. This is essential if we are to mobilize the unions against racist and anti-working class police tyranny.”
Below attach below the mini-booklet that we distributed to build the October 16 rally. A slightly condensed version of this pamphlet was used in the initial united-front press release in mid-January.
PDF:
https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/Riverstone_booklet.pdf
Web, HTML:
https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/Riverstone.html