Police terror on Palm Island

The people of Palm Island, off the coast of north Queensland, 
have been terrorised by Tactical Response paramilitaries, with 
children as young as nine being forced at gunpoint to lie face 
down in their homes during raids. The state terror tactics 
followed a community explosion of rage that had been building 
over the death in police custody on November 21 of islander 
Cameron Doomadgee, 36. The people took to the streets in anger 
after the coroner's report found Mr Doomadgee had suffered broken 
ribs and a ruptured liver and spleen portal vein.

During protests the police station and court house were burned 
down. The police were forced to flee to the hospital. The officer 
who arrested Mr Doomadgee left the island for his own safety. The 
island's other police officers left and refuse to return to duty.

Palm Island Council chairperson Erykah Kyle said the march on the 
police station was a spontaneous action and was fuelled by 
community anger with police.

"The community is very devastated", she said. "Shock has just 
gone through the community. People have been very angry. After 
339 recommendations regarding deaths in custody, and hundreds of 
thousands of dollars, here we are approaching 2005 and it is 
still happening.

"Certainly something has got to change for Palm Islanders", said 
Ms Kyle, whose own son died in police custody in 2001.

Describing the level of incarceration of her people as 
"unacceptable", she warned, "If it keeps going you can expect 
anything".

The Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission has begun an 
investigation into the death as well as that of an Aboriginal 
death in custody at Normanton.

Carpentaria Land Council representative Brad Foster came to Palm 
Island at the request of the Council. He described the 
paramilitaries as storm troopers. "They deliberately closed off 
the island while they practiced their terrorist drills on unarmed 
Palm Islanders.

"If they asked the Council and put up a list of people they 
wanted to speak to, they would have been presented to them 
without arrests being made at gunpoint and women and children 
being terrorised in their homes."

Aboriginal Legal Aid members were not allowed onto the island to 
represent those who have been arrested.

The police smashed down front doors of homes and stormed in with 
shotguns and riot shields. An alleged leader of the protests, Lex 
Wotton, was arrested by four car loads of police, who shot him 
with an immobiliser gun while he was stood with his hands up and 
the police guns were trained on him.

Shameful history

Of the many Aboriginal reserves set up across Queensland, Palm 
Island in particular gained a reputation as a "punishment place", 
a reputation which remains to this day.

Before white invasion in north Queensland, Palm Island belonged 
to the Manbarra people. Descendants of the Manbarra were still 
living on the tropical island, 65 kilometres north east of 
Townsville, when in 1914 the Queensland Government gazetted the 
Island as a reserve.

No further action was taken by the Government until 1918 when a 
cyclone flattened the Hull River Aboriginal Reserve near Tully. 
The Queensland Protector, JW Bleakley, then decided that Palm 
Island would become the replacement site. He regarded the 
location as an ideal place to confine Aboriginal and Islander 
people who were regarded by white society as "problem cases" and 
"uncontrollables".

Over the next two decades around 1630 people from 40 different 
Aboriginal groups across Queensland were removed by the 
Department and deposited on the Island.

Removal to Palm Island was the heaviest punishment a Department 
officer could legally administer. In charge of the new reserve 
settlement was an ex-army captain, Robert Curry, a man with no 
previous administrative experience.

From the start the settlement was underfinanced, with the 
residents of the island surviving on meagre rations and living in 
complete poverty. Leprosy and venereal disease spread through the 
settlement and the doctors appointed to the island were less than 
competent in their approach to medicine.

No inspections of Palm Island were made by the Department until 
the Governor of Queensland, Donald Thatcher, visited in 1923 and 
was critical of the squalid living conditions he observed.

This quickly led to a visit by the Protector Bleakley but no real 
improvement in conditions occurred. Administrator Curry continued 
to feud with the other white staff on the Island. Gradually he 
succumbed to the combined effects of alcoholism and mental 
illness and in February 1930 he went on a destructive rampage, 
killing his own children and torching several buildings before he 
was shot by one of his own Aboriginal staffers.

As was the case on all Queensland reserves, the residents of Palm 
Island were subject to strict supervision. Conditions were jail-
like. No one could leave the Island without the superintendent's 
permission and he had the power to censor all outgoing mail.

Speaking Aboriginal languages was forbidden. Employment 
opportunities were limited and the wages earned by Aboriginal 
workers were "managed" and misappropriated by the Department. 
Despite this high level of enforced control, poor health 
conditions continued to prevail. In 1957 a series of incidents 
involving the staff treatment of Aboriginal women and a decision 
by the Department to cut wages, led to a strike by the residents.

The Department responded by expelling 25 identified ringleaders 
of the resistance, and their families, from the island. A second 
strike occurred in 1974 when the Department sacked the local 
Community Council and threatened to turn control of the Island 
over to the Townsville City Council.

The Department finally relinquished control of the Island in 1985 
when title for the Island was passed to the Community Council in 
the form of a DOGIT. (Deed of Grant in Trust.)

While this gave the residents a greater say in the administration 
of the island, the transfer of title led to the removal of much 
of the Government infrastructure. Soon after the decision was 
made, barges arrived and houses, shops, the timber mill and 
farming equipment were disassembled and shipped back to the 
mainland.

Like many remote communities, Palm Island today continues to 
grapple with social problems including high unemployment, alcohol 
abuse and crime, a direct legacy of 80 years of mismanagement and 
abuse by Queensland Governments.

There are now reports that 18 young people from Palm Island are 
being held in Townsville and have been refused bail and 80 police 
on the island are looking for more people to arrest.