imprisonment

Need to delete sections 268.121 – 268.122 of the law against genocide in International Criminal Court Consequential Amendments Act 2002. The release on 29 November of The Family Matters Report 2017 details the 'escalating national crisis’ of the rate of removal of First Nations children from families. From our perspective the core issue is being left out of the debate. Removal of children from the group is one of the five definitions of genocide. The alarming rate of the removal of First Nations children 'from the group’ is only possible because the Commonwealth of Australia has not imported the full force of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. etc ... [node:read-more:link]

The Bar Association of NSW's submission to a Law Reform Commission inquiry into First Nations incarceration calls for a new approach to sentencing which takes into account the deprivation and disadvantage inherent in an individual's Aboriginal background. The association also calls for an end to mandatory sentences, which make it impossible for courts to make any allowance for such disadvantage in their decisions. The rate at which Aboriginal people end up in jail is appalling and in NSW last year Aboriginal people were 3 per cent of the population, but 24 per cent of the prison population. [node:read-more:link]

In 2012, a self-appointed neighborhood watch member, chased a 17yo African American boy in Florida, and shot him. Last week, a 55-year-old man chased a 14yo Elijah Doughty ran him down with his truck. In USA the court failed to hold the perpetrator accountable, giving rise to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In each case, a vigilante suspected a young person of colour of wrongdoing and killed him. In each case, the killer executed summary justice. [node:read-more:link]

A new report suggests Aboriginal people are facing enormous pressure to lose their traditional culture in order to be successful in Australia.
"Daily I'm juggling with who I am, how I talk, how I act and look and whatever," an anonymous respondent in the study said. "So you get it from the whitefella's, you know, that you can't talk good English, and then these blackfella's: 'Why are you acting white, talking white?'" [node:read-more:link]

PM Turnbull's Royal Commission into juvenile justice in Northern Territory is a cowardly act by a Prime Minister, who is ducking for cover in an attempt to protect his Minister, Nigel Scullion, from being scrutinised by the national and international community, which has been shocked into total disbelief at what was shown on Australian National TV by ABC Four Corners report 'Australia's Shame' on Monday 25 August 2016. We thank Cara Meldrum Hana for her investigative journalism skills to expose graphically what had been ignored by the authorities for so long. [node:read-more:link]