86% of Northern Territory prisoners are black

The human rights group Network Against Prohibition has called on international media present in Darwin for the Peter Falconio case to investigate the serious ongoing human rights abuses in the Northern Territory.

Indigenous Australians now account for 86% of the Northern Territory jail population despite making up only 30% of the population. This figure is rising, not falling.

Many Indigenous people are subject to apartheid-type conditions in the Northern Territory. In the cities and regional centres where refugees from remote Indigenous communities gather to escape poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing and essential services, disease and isolation, they are treated as second-class citizens.

The government funded and christian operated “night patrol” arrest indigenous people who are sitting in public places and who “appear” to be under the influence of alcohol. The people are detained in a cage on the back of a van and taken to the Watch-house or to the sobering-up shelter. Many are forced to return to a remote community, and the payment for their travel is taken out of their own welfare payments.

Rather than spend $8 million dollars on building houses and schools in remote communities, the NT Government made the announcement this week that they would build a new jail.

Drug laws are another tool used by the NT police and government to enforce the second-class status of Indigenous citizens. The recently enacted “drug house” laws which allow police to declare your house a “drug house” and signpost it with a 1.2 metre high flourescent green sign, have been used to target the indigenous community. More and more indigenous people are incarcerated for victimless cannabis offences.

NAP spokesperson Gary Meyerhoff said: ‘This anti-cannabis nonsense has been used to jail the 55-year old indigenous grandmother Margot Laughton, while white pot growers caught with kilos of cannabis, continue to be given suspended sentences. We are told that cannabis today is much stronger and more dangerous than the cannabis our politicians smoked while they were younger. We are told that “aboriginal people can’t handle it” and “it is devastating aboriginal communities”.’

‘Nothing could be further from the truth. The politicians need cannabis and petrol, and sometimes alcohol to whitewash the ongoing apartheid and genocide occurring throughout Australia.’

For further information contact NAP on 0415 16 2525 or see http://www.napnt.org

(+61 415 16 2525 from overseas)

Footnote: The drug house laws allow police to enter and search the sign-posted premises at any time without a warrant, conduct cavity searches on people on the premises, stop and question anyone within 200 metres of the sign and place restraining orders on people who visit the premises. Tenants can also be evicted before a house is even declared a “drug house”. As part of their ongoing campaign against the “drug house” laws, NAP has nominated 3 candidates in the Darwin City Council Election to be held on May 29. Stuart Highway is running for Lord Mayor, Robert Inder-Smith for Chan Ward and Gary Meyerhoff for the Lyons Ward.

For more information about the NAP election campaign see http://www.napnt.org/pages/vote1stuart.html