It is impossible to make sense of the barbaric footage depicted on Four Corners (July 25, 2016). Right here in Australia, children being tortured and abused at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory. Shackled to a chair while hooded, strangled and thrown to the ground before being stripped naked, kneed, punched, and tear-gassed at short range.
Who was this done to? The nation’s children, almost all of them Aboriginal. These actions are criminal, show a chronic system failure, and must wake the country from its slumber.
As traumatic as the program was to watch, we mustn’t let despondency take hold, and we must think of those young people, tortured under our noses. We cannot stand by and do nothing while we have a justice system that is not only failing to protect and rehabilitate our young people but that is perpetrating the crimes.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are 26 times more likely to be in detention. Blind adherence to tough on crime approaches and systemic racism must be stopped in their tracks.
The morning after the Four Corners program was aired, ANTaR issued a media release calling for the sacking of Northern Territory Minister for Corrective Services, Justice, Families and Children, John Elferink. We conducted media interviews, promoted it on social media, and let our supporters know what we thought needed to be done.
We welcome the announcement that Mr Elferink has been removed as Northern Territory Minister for Corrective Services. He should also be removed from all other Ministries including as Minister for Children and Families.
We cannot stop there.
We welcome the announcement of a Royal Commission by the Prime Minister but it should be developed completely independently from the Northern Territory Government, and have input from Aboriginal organisations working in the sector. More broadly, an urgent rethink is needed to address the incarceration of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country.
The Prime Minister must now listen to our calls for Justice Targets to reduce incarceration rates and work with state and territory governments on a national approach to drive coordinated action across the country.
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Andrew Meehan,
ANTaR National Director
