50 years after the tent embassy – still keeping kids out of jail

‘Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other. We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.’ – Angela Davis

Next month, on Invasion Day 2021 over 20,000 people blackfellas and whitefellas in Brisbane will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the setting up of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. I remember a young Cheryl Buchanan with Bob Weatherall speaking in King George Square in Meanjin (Brisbane) …  [See https://youtu.be/ZiSeB86q3rA?t=16]

That was probably in 1981.

Cheryl made some pretty good points that day about white supporters.

Some years before, Cheryl and Lionel Fogarty came to the UQ Students union asking for some money to buy a tent because they wanted to set up an aboriginal tent embassy in KGSq. We gave them the money and they set up as planned. At night, they were under constant attack from red necks and police. However they hung in there for a while. 

I think that was in 1976. Any way, all the social programs around Aboriginal health, legal aid, Murri Watchouse came out of those struggles in the early 1970s.

Nearly 50 years after the first embassy in 1972, a rally at parliament house and march to Qld government building at 1 William Street protested the locking up of aboriginal kids took place on (this was to be the last time I heard Sam Watson speak in public). This is what Sam (who had chaired the rally) had to say:

“There is overcrowding (in jails) so what they are doing is leaving (kids) in the watchouse. There are laws in place, state laws, state statutes (that have been broken)…. the Queensland Government is a breach of their own laws, federal statutes and also international rules. That is not acceptable. And when governments break the laws, we the people, have to make a stand and force them to honour those laws. That’s why we’re here. So, we going to hear from speakers and then we going to march across the road (to Tower of Power -shown).

Tomorrow night, there will be a picket down at the City Watchouse is in Roma Street … Tammy, where’s Tammy  … Tammy will talk from Amnesty International and that’s important. I think we should be doing something every couple of days … whatever it takes … until our children are back with their families or their communities … somewhere, other than where they are now … that is wrong … We all know kids, we all know our kids, we all know that can be little hard heads.

But you don’t do that … you don’t lock them up in the bloody watchouse. And you got police manning (staffing) the watchouse. But I doubt very much police have received any sort of trainingof how to respond to traumatized, stressed out children.

So that’s causing problems there as well. So we need, as I said to, to put the pressure on these while we’re trying to get a meeting with the (Minister).”  Ends

Amnesty International
Tammy Solonec from Amnesty International spoke about how her organisation had analysed hundreds of documents obtained through multiple Right To Information applications in Queensland.

This investigation helped ABC’s Four Corners episode, Inside the Watch House: Kids behind bars expose atrocious abuse of children inside Queensland watch houses. Labor has been in power almost uninterrupted for 30 years and little has been done.

Where are former Ministers Anne Warner and government funded agencies like Women behind Bars and its executive? This abuse has led to trauma and suicide by young aboriginal people. Speakers at the rally detailed the failure of Aboriginal Legal Aid to defend their kids when not guilty of offences brought by police.

Watch houses are no place for kids to spend their childhoods. Kids deserve to be in a classroom, with their friends, family, and community.

On 15 May 2019, about 35 people marched from Speakers Corner at Parliament house to 1 William Street to seek an urgent meeting with the Minister for Child Safety, Youth and Women and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Di Farmer, to have the kids immediately released from the watch houses around Queensland.

Calls were made for the sacking of Di Farmer because of her lack of knowledge of her brief and insensitive remarks on 4 Corners Program where she said that the problem will be fixed ‘some time next year’.

Later representatives from Minister’s office spoke with Karen Fusi and Sonya Coghill about current situation of Murri kids being locked up in watch houses … the Minister’s representatives were informed that the government is spending money in the wrong places.

Aid agencies like Murri Watch and Aboriginal legal Aid are not protecting kids properly. Further meeting of elders with government representatives is planned.

It is little wonder that the age of criminal responsibility in Australia is 10 years of age – shame!

Some years later in 2021 this is what a teacher who had worked in the Queensland State Prison system for years had to say:

“If you ever need to to understand the need to end the jailing of kids then you should spend time with them: listen to their stories and their struggles … what they’ve had to do to survive. The reality is they are exactly like you and me but with childhoods that belong in horror stories, and no matter what they have done (and some have done some v bad things) I deeply respect each and every one of them.”

Ian Curr
26 December 2021

              - URGENT COMMUNITY NOTICE - 

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL STATE MEMBER TODAY AND DEMAND THAT THE 95 CHILDREN BEING HELD IN STATE WATCH-HOUSES BE RELEASED BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY TODAY!!

CHILDREN BEING HELD IN WATCH-HOUSES BREACHES STATE, FEDERAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAWS.

RALLY AT THE STATE PARLIAMENT
11AM WEDNESDAY, 15 March 2019
MARCH ON 1 WILLIAM STREET

DEMAND TO SEE THE PREMIER AND HER MINISTER!!

THEY SYSTEM HAS FAILED OUR CHILDREN; BUT WE WILL NOT!!

Sam Watson

Kids out of Watch Houses vigil Thursday 16 March 2019 6pm