On January 26, more than 500 people marched through Melbourne to mark Invasion Day and to call for an end to black deaths in custody and for justice for Mulrunji, who died in the Palm Island police station in November, 2004. Rally chair Brianna Pike announced at the protest that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley would be charged with Mulrunji’s manslaughter.
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“Celebrate what’s great” was the official theme of this year’s Australia Day, January 26. But for Aboriginal Australians, what was worth celebrating on the day that marks the brutal British invasion of their land was the decision to charge the police officer Chris Hurley with the manslaughter of Mulrunji Doomadgee.
Prime Minister John Howard is to face trial in the NSW town of Bellingen on February 10. He is charged with offences including wilful and malicious damage to our national and international interests, aggravated indecent assault upon the working class and conspiring to pervert the course of democracy.
On January 21, Prime Minister John Howard condemned the organisers of the Big Day Out (BDO) music festival in Sydney for asking those planning to attend not to display Australian flags at the events as an “insult to the freedom it represents”.
Activists will descend on parliament house in Canberra on February 6 to demand that politicians do more to secure David Hicks release from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon slammed the police operation at the Big Day Out, saying that the use of sniffer dogs against recreational drug users had put peoples health in danger.
Thousands of Canadian students and their supporters are expected to protest tuition fee hikes at a national day of action on February 7.
At a meeting in Brazil on April 26, 2006, plans moved ahead between Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil for a major transcontinental oil pipeline. The pipeline would be 10,000 kilometres long and would link the four countries plus Paraguay and Uruguay.
A major victory has been won by the Aboriginal movement in Australia. The Queensland attorney-general’s department has decided that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee. Mulrunji, an Aboriginal man, died in police custody on Palm Island in 2004.
Prime Minister John Howard’s January 25 announcement of plans to deal with the water crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin contains some measures that are small steps in the right direction, such as the replacement of open irrigation channels with covered pipes to reduce evaporation.
Annette Peardon was nine years old when she and her brother were forcibly removed from their family on Cape Barren Island. They spent their youth in a series of foster homes and institutions around Tasmania. Last November, Tasmania’s parliament passed the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Bill 2006, the country’s first compensation law. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin spoke with Peardon about the significance of this law, and her struggle for justice.
The goal of socialism is alive; we have
seen the future in revolutionary Venezuela, Australian activists Coral Wynter and Jim McIlroy told a public meeting on January 26. The two have recently returned from a year in the capital, Caracas, reporting on events for Green Left Weekly.
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