Aboriginal academic assaulted and charged
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — Professor Gracelyn Smallwood, the most prominent Aboriginal health expert in Australia, was assaulted and suffered spinal injuries while being arrested and thrown into a police van in Townsville on February 18.
Smallwood was seized after telling six police officers that they were acting like the Ku Klux Klan. She had intervened on behalf of an Aboriginal youth and an Aboriginal elder, Renata Prior, during a dispute with police outside the Sovereign Hotel.
After Smallwood was arrested and placed in the van, police drove in a reckless manner to the Townsville watch-house, where she was strip-searched and imprisoned for three and a half hours.
Smallwood was charged in the Townsville Magistrate's Court on February 25 with using insulting words against a policewoman. She said she would fight the charge and intended to make a complaint about her mistreatment to the Criminal Justice Commission.
Townsville's Labor state MP, Mike Reynolds, on February 22 called for an urgent ministerial investigation into the incident. He said Townsville had been "shamed in the national spotlight". Reynolds said he was "outraged at any possibility that this remarkable Australian has been physically mistreated and denied basic human rights".
Brisbane Resistance organiser Angela Luvera told Green Left Weekly on February 26, "This is yet further proof of the racist nature of the law enforcement system in Australia. Along with the tragedies of black deaths in custody and mandatory sentencing, this incident highlights how Aboriginal people are routinely discriminated against by the police and courts. It is high time the whole justice system was radically changed, top to bottom."