The Queensland government has extinguished native title over 1,385 hectares of Wangan and Jagalingou country for the proposed Adani coal mine in the Australian state’s Galilee Basin without any public announcement of the decision.
The decision could see Wangan and Jagalingou protesters forcibly removed by police from their traditional lands.
Wangan and Jagalingou Council leader Adrian Burragubba, and a group of Aboriginal representatives, had been calling on the government to rule out transferring their land, arguing that they had never given their consent for Adani to occupy it.
In a meeting with government officials on Friday, seeking a halt on leases being issued for mine infrastructure, they learned that the state government had instead granted Adani exclusive possession freehold title over large swathes of the land on Thursday, including the area currently occupied for ceremonial purposes.
“We have been made trespassers on our own country,” Burragubba said. “Our ceremonial grounds, in place for a time of mourning for our lands as Adani begins its destructive processes, are now controlled by billionaire miner Adani.”
“With insider knowledge that the deal was already done, Adani had engaged Queensland police and threatened us with trespass,” he said.
To mine any land under a native title claim, a miner needs an indigenous land use agreement, essentially a contract that allows the state to extinguish native title.
Adani has an agreement over the land: five of the 12 native claimants have opposed it, but have lost successive legal challenges in court to prevent it. Seven of the native title claimants support the Adani mine.
Burragubba and a group of supporters set up camp on the land ahead of its legal transfer to Adani.
He said they will refuse to leave.
He said a notice received by the council said that the land “is to be handed over to Adani on 3 August 2019.”
The notice also says that “Adani will request the assistance of police to remove Mr Burragubba and his supporters from the camp.”
Burragubba said that his group would not abandon their protest nor quit their land.
“We will never consent to these decisions and will maintain our defense of country,” he said. “We will be on our homelands to care for our lands and waters, hold ceremonies and uphold the ancient, abiding law of the land.”
In a statement, Adani said it had worked closely with the traditional owners of the proposed mine’s site since 2011 “to ensure the customs and wishes of Indigenous people are respected and supported.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing