She who stumbles

EDIT: This report contains errors and is based on second-hand accounts. It was Northern Territory police (not Federal police) who conducted the raids checking outstanding warrants. The reports of surveillance cameras has not been confirmed, and the reports of the Muckaty station women has been questioned.

This letter circulated a few months ago, but it has resurfaced on some e-lists I’m on. I wanted to blog then, but I was on my hiatus and couldn’t justify taking the time to do it.

The Australian Federal Police are being rather heavy-handed in the Northern Territory.

FYI- This has gone to the 7.30 report and several newspapers. please circulate.

Dear Kerry O’Brien and 7.30 researchers,

I have just returned from the Northern Territory. I want John Howard to explain why house to house raids without warrants are being conducted by the AFP in all the Alice Springs town camps.

I also want to know why at least two of the senior women who toured major cities speaking out against a uranium waste dump on their traditional lands have been raided by the AFP on warrants issued by a Federal Magistrate in Canberra, their furniture slashed with knives, belongings damages, laptops and mobile phones seized, and phones tapped. I was told by one of the women that the warrant gave 12 hours access to her home, and that she was told that the measures were justified because of the security crackdown for APEC ministers. One of those women is an elderly grandmother.

I have also been told by town camp residents that the AFP has set up surveillance on all households in the town camps, and have photographed without consent, every Aboriginal child in those town camps. In the 1990s the AFP were successfully taken to court for exactly the same violations in Redfern.

Please report on this disgraceful conduct, and pursue a full explanation from the Howard Government.

regards,
Jennifer Martiniello
Member, Advisory Board
Australian Centre for Indigenous History,
Australian National University
Aroha Groves