Aussie official apologizes after Aboriginal abuse revelations

Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) chief minister Michael Gunner has apologized after revelations in a report about “shocking” rights abuses at a notorious juvenile detention center, amid a separate crisis at an off-shore refugee detention center.

Gunner said he was “sorry” after the Northern Territory royal commission into the protection and detention of children released its final report on Friday, revealing appalling abuses against Aboriginal children at the Don Dale detention center in NT.

The inquiry found that Aboriginal children had been abused over many years at the infamous maximum-security facility.

The abuses included verbal abuse, inappropriate force, restraint, and making children carry out humiliating or degrading acts or commit violence against one another.

“Children and young people were subjected to regular, repeated and distressing mistreatment in detention and there was a failure to follow the procedures and requirements of the law in many instances,” said royal commissioners Margaret White and Mick Gooda. “These things happened on our watch, in our country, to our children.”

Gunner said the government’s failure to protect the kids in care had been “a stain on the Northern Territory reputation.”

“For this I am sorry. But more than this I’m sorry for the stories that live in the children we failed,” he added.

Most of Australia’s Aboriginal population resides in the Northern Territory.

Former juvenile detainee Dylan Voller, who is now a rights activist, said the report was positive but that he did not have a lot of hope that the NT government and chief minister would act on it.

“Today was the first time Michael Gunner wanted to apologize. He’s seen the videos, why couldn’t he apologize first?” Voller said.

Voller, now 27, is an Aboriginal who earlier spent time at the Don Dale center, where he was abused, including by being restrained by the neck, stripped naked, and tear-gassed.

Footage of Voller shackled to a restraining chair in a spit-hood was featured on a TV program in July 2016.

The former juvenile detainee said the pictures of him that appeared ... showing him in a spit hood and restraint chair were uncomfortable to look at but if they hadn’t gotten out, the royal commission wouldn’t have happened.

The royal commission said it had referred a number of matters to police and given the NT government three months to deliver a plan for closing the Don Dale juvenile detention center.

It made some 230 other recommendations for improvement, as well.

Earlier, the United Nations Human Rights Committee had condemned the Australian government for its ill treatment of and abuses against not only its minority Aboriginal population, but also refugees landing in Australia.

PressTV-UN grills Australia over refugees, indigenous people

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has for a second day in Geneva grilled Australia over the country’s human rights record.

Australian authorities have abandoned hundreds of refugees at a detention center in Papua New Guinea (PNG)’s Manus Island since October 31. Water, food, medicine, and electricity services to the site have also been cut.

PNG forces, meanwhile, have reportedly poured garbage into the refugees’ water supplies in an attempt to force the refugees out.

The United Nations (UN) has called on Australia and PNG to put an end to the “unconscionable human suffering” of the asylum seekers on Manus.

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