Aborigine cooked to death in Australian prison van.

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Sunday June 14, 2009 17:20

by waltzin matilda

Western Australia's Attorney General is looking at whether the government can and should terminate a prison transport company's contract in the wake of a scathing coroner's report. The State Coroner Alastair Hope examined the death of an Aboriginal elder in the back of a prison van. Mr Ward was transported across Western Australia from the city of Laverton to Kalgoorlie, a mostly desert region know as Goldfields. Temperatures were recorded at 47º on the day. Although there was no airconditioning he was given 600ml of water to ease his suffering and ensure a comfortable 250 mile or 400 km journey.

He died of heatstroke.

Elder Ward's family will sue - while the government consider criminal charges and dropping the contract next year.

This alas is not the only recent case of appalling prisoner abuse, which despite the attempts by the Rudd regime in Australia to put brutal disregard for human rights and aboriginals behind, are still clearly present & most worryingly abuse of a racist nature is connected to the subcontracted firm in question.

Indeed serious allegations of abuse which clearly verges on torture were first made in 2005. ABC an Australian TV channel's "Four Corners" program found the company formerly known as "GSL" (now G4S) had been the subject of a damning report by Queensland officials regarding the transportation of immigration detainees in 2005 . The immigration detainees were being transported from Melbourne in the state of Victoria to the notorious Woomera detention centre in the neighbouring state of South Australia. It is a journey of approximately 1,400 kilometres or 868 miles. They were given neither food not water before setting off and one prisoner was reduced to drinking their own urine. Which incidently is a very dangerous thing to do and not recommended in any extreme survival situtation.

a documentary entitled "escape from Woomera" http://aminima.net/wp/?p=409&language=es

The man who wrote that 2005 report, the former head of Queensland's corrective services, Keith Hamburger, says he is concerned about the issues raised by the subsequent death of Mr Ward in Western Australia. Though for the moment the establishment seems to closing ranks on the cost-effectiveness of ending its oursourced contracts rather than colectively hanging its head in utter shame.

But you only get one institutional apology a century........ if you're lucky

(for additional reading I'd recommend looking at Ciaron O'Reilly's 2008 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/89726 and a 2004 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/63521?comment_order=des...=true as well as http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76936 and indeed consider

Sourced from various Oz papers, today's Guardian & bit of background searching and cross-referencing. Put the work in be my motto.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/14/australia-a...n-van