Sunday, 19 August, 2007

by Jennifer Martiniello
Westender

Residents told the measures were justified because of the security crackdown for APEC ministers meeting - reports of widespread AFP surveillance

I have just returned from the Northern Territory. I have been informed that house to house raids are being conducted by the AFP in all the Alice Springs town camps, and at least two of the senior women who toured major cities speaking out against uranium waste dumps on their traditional lands have been raided by the AFP on warrants issued by a Federal Magistrate in Canberra, their furniture slashed with knives, belongings damages, laptops and mobile phones seized, and phones tapped.

I was told by one of the women that the warrant gave 12 hours access to her home, and that she was told that the measures were justified because of the security crackdown for APEC ministers. One of those women is an elderly grandmother. This is as ludicrous as the WWII newsreels that alleged the Nazis and Communists were recruiting remote traditional Aboriginal people as internal agents.

I have also been told by town camp residents that the AFP has set up surveillance on all households in the town camps, and have photographed without consent, every Aboriginal child in those town camps. In the 1990s the AFP were successfully taken to court for exactly the same violations in Redfern. After Australia's National Day of Shame, 17 August, 2007, all Australians should now be asking 'What if this were done to us?' If such a blatant attack on the basic human rights of one group of Australians can be so shamelessly perpetrated, where will it stop?