(en) Australia, Melbourne, The Anvil #4/1 - Strike to stop aboriginal deaths in custody*

The movement against Aboriginal deaths in custody is growing. It is growing because the 
deaths just keep happening, and that?s criminal. We're not just talking about deaths from 
natural causes. Many of these deaths are far from natural. ---- Racism, Impunity and 
Genocide ---- We're talking about: ---- (a) Eddie Murray. The coppers said he ?committed 
suicide? in 1981 by hanging himself ? when he was so drunk he couldn't even stand 
properly. ---- (b) T.J. Hickey. In 2004, he was on his push-bike and chased by a cop car 
when he impaled himself on a fence. The coppers turned away a police rescue van. TJ died 
in hospital that night. ---- (c) Mulrunji Doomadgee. Also in 2004, Mulrinji was killed by 
a copper who ?accidentally? fell on him in a Palm Island watch house and cleaved his liver 
in two. ---- (d) Mr Ward. He was cooked alive in the back of a prison van in 2008, while 
being transported across the West Australian desert in a heat wave.

(e) Ms Dhu. She died in police custody last year, with serious and unexplained injuries 
after twice being denied admission to hospital.

And these cases are only the tip of the iceberg. There's pattern here and the pattern is 
racism, the pattern is police impunity and the pattern is genocide. No copper and no 
police officer in Australia has ever been convicted for causing the death of an indigenous 
person in custody. The 1987-91 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 
investigated 99 deaths and concluded that not one was due to police violence.

How Can Deaths in Custody End?

The movement against deaths in custody is growing, but so far it is nowhere near strong 
enough. Australia's original sin, the Aboriginal Genocide and the theft of Aboriginal 
land, means that anti-Aboriginal racism is an integral part of the Australian State. Even 
if an enlightened reforming government were elected, Aboriginal people would still be 
arrested in numbers vastly disproportional to the non-Aboriginal population and Aborigines 
would still die unnatural deaths in custody. The problem is too deep-rooted for mere 
parliamentary change to be effective.

Aboriginal deaths in custody will only stop when the capitalist class as a whole, 
regardless of the governing party, becomes serious about stopping them. And that will only 
happen if the working class as a whole mobilises to demand that the deaths cease. The 
clearest and most emphatic way for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal workers to mobilise 
is through strike action.

A 24-hour protest strike on the day of the funeral (or other appropriate date) by all 
workers in that State, or possibly across Australia, called with the agreement of the 
victim's family, would speak to the bosses in the only language they understand. If we cut 
off the flow of profits whenever an Aboriginal person died an unnatural death in custody, 
the capitalists would soon get the message and find some way to pull their thugs into 
line. They'd be falling over themselves to implement the recommendations of the Royal 
Commission. Those recommendations were part of a deal which denied justice for past 
deaths, in return for hope that future ones might be avoided.

Why Would Workers Strike for Aboriginal Rights?

An injury to one is an injury to all. It might not be easy to get workers in Australia to 
strike against deaths in custody, but it would be in their interests. The working class 
can only defend itself by defending the interests of each and every worker. Any oppression 
hurts the working class by sowing divisions which bind some part of the working class to 
their exploiters through illusions or reactionary ideology. Divisions hurt workers' 
ability to fight back as a united force.

By campaigning throughout the working class, we can raise awareness of Aboriginal deaths 
in custody and show why workers must stop them. And when we campaign for workers to answer 
each unnatural death in custody with a protest strike, workers will find one more reason 
to re-build our unions and seize control from the Laborite officials. Our unions would 
become more effective weapons in the class struggle.

* From 'The Anvil' newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG), issue 4/1, 
Feb. 2015.

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/27850