Hundreds of people rallied in major cities across Australia yesterday, criticising the government’s response to video showing aboriginal children being tear-gassed and abused in prison.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ordered an inquiry into the treatment of children in the detention centre after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week aired footage showing guards tear-gassing inmates and strapping a half-naked, hooded boy to a chair.
But he has rejected calls for a broader national inquiry.
Opposition Labor leader Bill Shorten said his party fully supported the inquiry but argued that it should also have indigenous commissioners.
“This royal commission has to be with Aboriginal people, not to Aboriginal people,” he told reporters in the northern city of Darwin.
“I believe it would be appropriate for the royal commission to have two co-commissioners who are Aboriginal Australians, strong people, men and women, who can make sure the voices and the experiences of Aboriginal Australians are given full justice in this royal commission.”
Australia’s Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion has since apologised for not being aware of what went on at the Don Dale centre.
One barrister has described the treatment of some teens at the facility as reminiscent of Guantanamo Bay, the notorious US military prison in Cuba that holds terror suspects.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t aware of the full circumstances that were exposed this week,” Scullion said.
The United Nation Human Rights High Commission called on Australia on Friday to compensate children abused in prison.
“We are shocked by the video footage that has emerged from Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory,” the office of the UN Human Rights High Commission said in a statement. “We call on the authorities to identify those who committed abuses against the children and to hold them responsible for such acts ... compensation should also be provided.”
The Commission also called on the government to ratify the Optional Protocol to Convention Against Torture, which would allow independent investigators to inspect detention facilities.
Indigenous Australian rapper Adam Briggs told Reuters that the issues were national ones and not limited to the Northern Territory.
“The elephant in the room is that it is a racism problem, but they aren’t addressing that,” Briggs said.
The Northern Territory’s corrections minister was sacked just hours following the broadcast and on Wednesday the territory suspended the use of hoods and restraints on children.
On Friday, the Northern Territory government dropped charges against two of the six children tear-gassed by police.
According to court documents, the children had been charged in June for damaging the prison in an escape attempt.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez said that the use of hoods, restraints and gas on children in detention centres could violate the UN treaty barring torture.
The case highlights concern about the disproportionate numbers of aboriginal youth in custody, with indigenous leaders calling for politicians to deal with the wider issue of the treatment of Aborigines in Australia.
Aborigines comprise just 3% of Australia’s population but make up 27% of those in prison and represent 94% of the Northern Territory’s juvenile inmates.
Australia’s roughly 700,000 indigenous citizens track near the bottom of almost every economic and social indicator for the country’s 23mn people.
At snap “emergency protests” in Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere yesterday, hundreds gathered to call for justice for the teens, many of whom are Aboriginal.
A Reuters photographer estimated about 300 people turned out in Sydney.
“If we could see some action, some real fair and just action taken, I think that would allay some concern,” Sydney community elder Aunty Jenny Munroe told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Demonstrators gather outside Sydney’s Town Hall to protest alleged child abuse in Australia’s Northern Territory detention centres.
