Surely this is a dream become a nightmare
08.04.2010
By: TONY KOCH
COMMENT
IMAGINE that in 2004 you were a teenager living on Palm Island. You hear that a fisherman you know as Mulrunji has been arrested for being drunk and swearing.
You hear he has been taken to jail by a 190cm police officer. Mulrunji Doomadgee had been singing when arrested, yet an hour later he is dead.
A week later, you are in a crowd of locals hearing the results of the autopsy: Doomadgee suffered facial bruising and four broken ribs and his liver was torn almost in two. You are told it was an accidental death.
Then the crowd erupts and burns the police station down in their anger.
Police in riot gear burst into homes that night and the next with rifles pointed at women and children, and arrest a couple of dozen rioters. They are tried before courts, and many are jailed.
An inquest says the arresting officer was responsible for Doomadgee's death.
Eventually he is tried for manslaughter, but an all-white jury in Townsville finds him not guilty. Another inquest is held because the police officer wants erased from the record that he was responsible for the death.
Evidence emerges that mates of the officer did the investigation; all the police involved were represented by the same Queensland Police Union-appointed solicitor. The three staff in the station when Doomadgee died gave evidence they saw nothing that would implicate the arresting officer.
You visit Doomadgee's grave, and notice also the grave of his 18-year old son, who hanged himself last year.
Surely this is just a dream -- none of it could really have happened in a just society.
