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Racial riot rocks Sydney

Youths hurl bricks and bottles at riot police and firemen in the inner city suburb of Redfern near Sydney early yesterday. Investigations were launched yesterday into the circumstances surrounding the death of an Aboriginal teenager which sparked rioting that left more than 40 police injured by flying rocks, bricks and gasoline bombs. PHOTO: AFP

The dried blood on the streets of Sydney's black ghetto yesterday following an overnight riot by Aborigines was a stark reminder of the continuing deep, and at times violent, divide between white and black Australia.

About 100 Aborigines, many of them drunk, pelted 200 riot police with Molotov cocktails, stones and bottles, as anger boiled over in the inner-city suburb of Redfern.

The riot was triggered by the death of Aboriginal Thomas Hickey, who was impaled on a metal fence after falling from his bicycle on Saturday. He died in a hospital on Sunday morning.

His mother, Gail, said her 17-year-old son was injured while being pursued by police. Police say patrolling officers merely passed by the boy who then sped off, losing control of his bike.

Senior Aboriginal leaders yesterday condemned the violence, the worst civil unrest in Australia's largest city for at least a decade, but said the riot reflected a wider issue -- the alienation of black Australia.

"People should not kid themselves -- this is Australia," said Aden Ridgeway, the only Aboriginal politician in the national parliament.

"Last night's display of violence is an extreme example of the extent of the alienation felt by some Aboriginal kids and the manifestation of the difficult relationships in the area."

Australia's 400,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders make up 2 percent of Australia's 20 million people.

Aborigines remain the nation's most disadvantaged group, dying 20 years younger than other Australians with far higher rates of imprisonment, unemployment, welfare dependency, domestic violence and alcoholism.

Most live in remote communities in Australia's outback, with smaller groups in squalid accommodation on the fringes of regional towns. Very few live in major cities.

Black Australia calls the arrival of white settlers in 1788 "the invasion." Thousands were massacred by white settlers or evicted from their ancestral lands.

And Aboriginal leaders say racism in Australia has dictated their lives ever since.

A public gathering by Aborigines in Redfern yesterday saw speaker after speaker express anger and frustration at how Aborigines were being treated.

"There is no such thing as [racial] reconciliation," said Lyall Munro, an Aboriginal elder in Redfern, citing the thousands of Aborigines in jails or juvenile detention centers.

It was not until a 1967 national vote by white Australians that Aborigines were actually granted citizenship. Until then they were governed under flora and fauna laws.

Aborigines in the remote Northern Territory gained land rights in 1976 after a long struggle, but Aborigines in the rest of the country are still fighting for land rights.

A 1997 report by Australia's human rights commission found an assimilation policy used by various Australian governments up to the 1960s was "systematic racial discrimination and genocide."

The report detailed the plight of the "Stolen Generation" children, taken from their parents to be raised in white families, but who were sexually abused or used as slave labor in Australia's vast outback.

It called for a government apology and compensation, but conservative Prime Minister John Howard will not issue an apology for past atrocities against Aborigines, saying Australians today have nothing to be sorry about.

In recent years Aboriginal leaders have moved away from calls for racial reconciliation to a more pragmatic call for help to tackle drug and alcohol abuse which is killing their people.

But white and black Australia rarely cross paths in this island continent and when they do tensions rise. White Australia says Aborigines are to blame for their own poverty, while Aborigines say racism dictates their plight.

"They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening," an angry Aborigine called Tammie told the Redfern meeting.

"Aboriginal people are peaceful people but [if] they push our buttons, mate, we will go to the point where if they're going to shed blood so will we," Tammie said.
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