If
the attack had happened in an affluent part of Australia, there would
be coast-to-coast coverage for days. The lack of media reports on a
story affecting Indigenous people is telling
Celeste Liddle theguardian.com,
On Tuesday evening, an explosive was hurled from a car into a small Aboriginal community
near Broome, Western Australia, injuring four people. One woman had to
be flown to Perth for emergency surgery, and three other people
sustained spinal, hearing and eyesight injuries.
A small local news report details that One Mile Aboriginal Community residents witnessed a car driving through the community slowly before pitching something out of the window. Police investigations are still continuing, although it has been suggested that the attack may have been “a prank that's gone seriously wrong”. I admit to being sceptical this attack was just a "prank" – the target seems quite specific. As investigations are underway, my speculations on what the motives were and who is most likely responsible shall end here.
What I do wish to know, however, is where is the media and Australian community outrage over this event? Where is the coast-to-coast coverage? If I was not hooked into social media, where a number of Indigenous community members were talking about it, I probably would have missed the story due to the lack of coverage. It is telling that the Chinese national press agency Xinhua covered it, yet most of the Australian sources failed to mention it. Last year, when I was told at work that the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had been the target of a bomb threat, I was able to read about it in a variety of sources. That one turned out to be a hoax; this attack actually injured four people.
Had this been an attack on an Australian city, or on a group of non-Indigenous people, would it have been deemed an event of public importance? As Aboriginal feminist and activist The Koori Woman so eloquently writes: “(I'm) Idly wondering what would happen if I went and casually lobbed an explosive down the whitest street in the village”.
Others queried why, in similar circumstances, labels such as “potential hate crime” or “terrorist attack” are usually used, but in this instance the event is downplayed to a “possible prank”. Is it because the people who have been harmed are not valued by a huge section of the Australian public, and therefore it is felt that people won't respond to the news? Or is it more insidious than this, and many Australians would make the assumption that the victims of this attack are actually guilty by virtue of their race and their location, and have therefore somehow brought it upon themselves?
It is telling that news from Indigenous communities rarely gets covered unless the government is calling for a “national emergency” to justify deploying defence forces into communities, or if it involves an Aboriginal person who has achieved celebrity status. It is also telling that on the rare occasions when we hear about violence on the communities, it tends to focus on internal community violence and not violence perpetuated upon a community by outsiders.
I have to wonder whether the community members feel they even have the right to report crimes perpetrated against them. In Western Australia, 42% of the prison population is Aboriginal; more than 11 times what the Western Australian prison population parity rate would be. These racialised imprisonment rates cannot possibly foster a faith in the justice system, particularly for small community people. They are vulnerable, and most of the country appear to not be interested.
My thoughts are with the One Mile community and the families that have been affected by this act. I hope that there is justice for these victims as they struggle to make sense of it. And to social media users who refused to let this story about a crime perpetuated against people living on an outback Aboriginal community be ignored, thank you.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/broome-bomb-indigenous-people-coverage
A small local news report details that One Mile Aboriginal Community residents witnessed a car driving through the community slowly before pitching something out of the window. Police investigations are still continuing, although it has been suggested that the attack may have been “a prank that's gone seriously wrong”. I admit to being sceptical this attack was just a "prank" – the target seems quite specific. As investigations are underway, my speculations on what the motives were and who is most likely responsible shall end here.
What I do wish to know, however, is where is the media and Australian community outrage over this event? Where is the coast-to-coast coverage? If I was not hooked into social media, where a number of Indigenous community members were talking about it, I probably would have missed the story due to the lack of coverage. It is telling that the Chinese national press agency Xinhua covered it, yet most of the Australian sources failed to mention it. Last year, when I was told at work that the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had been the target of a bomb threat, I was able to read about it in a variety of sources. That one turned out to be a hoax; this attack actually injured four people.
Had this been an attack on an Australian city, or on a group of non-Indigenous people, would it have been deemed an event of public importance? As Aboriginal feminist and activist The Koori Woman so eloquently writes: “(I'm) Idly wondering what would happen if I went and casually lobbed an explosive down the whitest street in the village”.
Others queried why, in similar circumstances, labels such as “potential hate crime” or “terrorist attack” are usually used, but in this instance the event is downplayed to a “possible prank”. Is it because the people who have been harmed are not valued by a huge section of the Australian public, and therefore it is felt that people won't respond to the news? Or is it more insidious than this, and many Australians would make the assumption that the victims of this attack are actually guilty by virtue of their race and their location, and have therefore somehow brought it upon themselves?
It is telling that news from Indigenous communities rarely gets covered unless the government is calling for a “national emergency” to justify deploying defence forces into communities, or if it involves an Aboriginal person who has achieved celebrity status. It is also telling that on the rare occasions when we hear about violence on the communities, it tends to focus on internal community violence and not violence perpetuated upon a community by outsiders.
I have to wonder whether the community members feel they even have the right to report crimes perpetrated against them. In Western Australia, 42% of the prison population is Aboriginal; more than 11 times what the Western Australian prison population parity rate would be. These racialised imprisonment rates cannot possibly foster a faith in the justice system, particularly for small community people. They are vulnerable, and most of the country appear to not be interested.
My thoughts are with the One Mile community and the families that have been affected by this act. I hope that there is justice for these victims as they struggle to make sense of it. And to social media users who refused to let this story about a crime perpetuated against people living on an outback Aboriginal community be ignored, thank you.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/broome-bomb-indigenous-people-coverage
No comments:
Post a Comment