Outback Burial for TJ Hickey after Sydney Race Riot by The Age / Reuters 10:13am 25th Feb, 2004   February 25, 2004    'TJ' Hickey laid to rest with messages of peace" by Debra Jopson. (The Age)    "It is a terrible thing to have to do, to have to bury a child," said Reverend Gary Stuart as he presided over the funeral of the youth whose death drove Redfern to riot.    A few weeks ago, Gail Hickey was at home in Redfern planning a birthday celebration for her oldest son, Thomas "TJ" Hickey, due to turn 18 on March 9. Yesterday, she sat by his grave, weeping and clutching a photo of his small, cheeky face after she had watched his coffin being lowered into the red dirt of Walgett cemetery.    She was surrounded by 300 Aboriginal mourners but, in some ways, she was alone. Despite family pleas to the NSW Department of Corrective Services, TJ's father, Ian "Bodgey" West, was absent. The Department deemed it too great a security risk to let him out of jail, even handcuffed under guard. Reverend Stuart had to take the father's place bearing the coffin, draped in an Aboriginal flag topped with flowers, past an honour guard of 16 youths in the red-and-white football jerseys of the Walgett Dragons.    TJ's distraught six younger sisters had to be hugged by other West family members, many exhausted by the long bus ride from Sydney. On a morning that was cloudy, about 100 mourners flowed on to the street from the small white wooden St Peter's Anglican church, which seats just 200.    Through the swish of small leafy branches used to swat flies, the overflow listened to the 45-minute service over a loudspeaker that sometimes faltered. It began with TJ's favourite song, Baby Boy by British R&B outfit Big Brovaz. Chosen by TJ's 14-year-old girlfriend April, it declares, "You'll always be my baby boy".    His mother and father were still "trying to understand and to come to terms with" the circumstances in which they lost TJ on "that fateful day", said family member David Cargill, who gave the eulogy.    TJ died early in the morning 10 days ago after he was thrown from his bike in Redfern and impaled on a fence. Believing that the police had chased him to his death, the suburb exploded that night.    Yesterday, locals were anxious about any recurrence of riots and the police force had reinforcements on standby. But it was only a rooster that breached the peace, crowing as the organist played the hymn The Old Rugged Cross.    There was no talk of TJ's troubles with the law. David Cargill told of a golden-hearted youth."TJ took his sisters and cousins fishing and swimming. On one occasion, he saved his sister from drowning," he said. TJ's final message was one of peace. "Practise what you preach and turn the other cheek," emanated from the church as his coffin left to the tune of another favourite, LA hip-hoppers the Black Eyed Peas. That closing song Where is the Love?, starts with the line "What's wrong with the world, mama?" and continues, "to discriminate only generates hate".    The youths of TJ's honour guard formed a ring around his final resting place and gave him three cheers. A white-shirted mate sat long after most had dispersed, patting down the earth of TJ's grave.    Sydney. February 24, 2004    "Outback Burial for TJ After Sydney Riot " by Paul Tait. (Reuters)    Disadvantaged Aborigines wailed and wept at an outback funeral Tuesday for a black teen-ager whose violent death sparked a nine-hour riot in Australia's largest city and underscored the country's deep racial divide. Hundreds of mourners were watched by a low-key police presence at a simple funeral service for Thomas "TJ" Hickey in his home town of Walgett, 325 miles northwest of Sydney.    At the same time in Sydney, a cordon of a dozen police watched as about 200 Aborigines marched through Redfern, the black suburban ghetto where the 17-year-old was impaled on a steel fence post after falling from his bicycle 10 days ago.    "If we can march along in solemnness and sadness we will let the whole world see how sad we feel in this community," Aboriginal leader Kevin Smith told the marchers.    Prison officials refused to release Hickey's father from an outback jail for the funeral because of security fears, and guards kept a large media contingent away from the service.    Both events passed peacefully with no signs of the violence that left about 40 police injured in one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in Sydney in more than a decade.    Relatives and Aboriginal community leaders have said Hickey was being chased by police when he was impaled on the fence on February 14. He died in hospital a day later. Police strongly deny the accusation and investigations into the cause of his death are underway.    Australia's 400,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders make up two percent of its population of 20 million and are the most disadvantaged group in a country where white settlement began in 1788, with what black Australians call "the invasion."    They suffer imprisonment, illness, alcoholism and welfare dependency rates far higher than white Australians and have long complained of brutal treatment by police.    MASSACRED BY COLONISERS    Tens of Thousands of Aborigines were massacred after settlement by British colonizers and many more were evicted from ancestral lands, to be administered under flora and fauna laws until 1967.      Long-simmering tensions exploded into violence several hours after Hickey's death on February 15. Up to 100 bare-chested protesters threw bricks and Molotov cocktails at 200 police in an overnight riot before an uneasy calm was eventually restored.    The Redfern protest march began Tuesday at "The Block," a ghetto of dilapidated and graffiti-smeared houses and a no-man's land for white Australians not far from central Sydney.    Emotions bubbled over and a young girl sank to her knees sobbing as flowers were placed on a makeshift memorial on the fence where Hickey was impaled outside a public housing estate.    "We want to try to maintain the peace," Aboriginal leader Smith told the marchers. "We will show the world we are not the hoodlums and thugs that they make us out to be."    Hickey's mother Gail and grandmother Wilma West were among more than 20 family members who drove from Sydney to Walgett on two mini-buses for the funeral, where Hickey's football team, the Walgett Dragons, formed an honor guard.    Television broadcast pictures of a family member carrying a photograph of Hickey as white-shirted pall-bearers carried his rose-draped coffin out of St Peter's Anglican Church.    Hickey's six sisters cried as they followed the coffin. Shopkeepers closed their doors as a mark of respect as the funeral procession passed down Walgett's main street. Walgett remained calm, police and local officials saying they did not expect trouble because tribal elders had called for calm.    "Certainly everything's very peaceful there," Walgett Mayor Peter Waterford told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. "The elders have been telling everyone to quieten down."    Walgett is a railhead and rural hub of about 2,100 people. A similar number of indigenous Australians live in surrounding townships and two nearby Aboriginal reserves.    February 18, 2004    Australian Aboriginal Senator Aden Ridgeway:"Boiling point after a decade of tension" (The Australian)    In many ways, what happened in Sydney's Redfern on Sunday night could only have happened on that particular night. The tragic death of a well-known and loved community member, TJ Hickey; the stories that quickly circulated regarding the involvement or otherwise of police in his death; a day of grief, anger and confusion built as the temperatures soared; night fell -- and it was on.    I do not excuse the events of that night. But they come as no surprise to me or any person who is familiar with the volatile dynamics of Redfern, and the wider issues of indigenous politics in this country.    This is the worst race riot in Australian history. It peeled back the thin veneer of an undercurrent of racial tension building up over the past 10 years. We had not seen such an eruption of violence since the Goondiwindi-Boggabilla race riots of the 1980s, which led to the establishment of the Toomelah inquiry in 1987.    In race riots the world over, most who participate are young men. No doubt people will over-simplify the images and the reports they have seen. Many will be quick to point the finger of blame at Aboriginal youth and some will question the absence of parents or responsible community leaders in this tragic saga.    What happened on Sunday night in Lawson Street, Redfern was an extreme expression of the mistrust between Aboriginal youth and police set against a backdrop of poverty, lack of jobs and limited education. This combined with a general sense of hopelessness that any young person there might have greater life opportunities beyond Redfern, Waterloo or surrounding areas.    The Block has its share of drug, alcohol and dysfunctionality problems, just like any other community where poverty is rife. What is exceptional here is that we have a community of Aboriginal people living in Australia's largest and wealthiest city. They have all of life's infrastructure at their fingertips -- and yet the opportunities of life in the big city are not within their reach.    Why is it that many of these young people do not stay on at school? Why is it that their parents invariably can't get jobs and why is it that both the adult and young are over-represented in the criminal justice system?    I would doubt whether there is one Aboriginal person working in the local retail outlets and nor would any of the larger retail stores ever consider moving to the area. Most local Aboriginal people work in the services sector, predominantly for local Aboriginal organisations involved in health, housing, employment, and women and children's services.    Many of these activities occur in the indigenous work-for-the-dole program. While this program has merit -- it has been in place in Aboriginal communities for more than 25 years -- there is little prospect for participants to graduate to real and meaningful jobs.    I have my doubts as to whether NSW Premier Bob Carr's "three-inquiry" response is sufficient or if it will hit the mark at all. It is a weak response that will not satisfy the community, mostly because it will not be seen as independent of the police and government, and largely because it will not examine any issues concerning the social and material needs of the Redfern Aboriginal community.    As in 1987, nothing short of a full judicial inquiry will offer the sort of outcomes and expectations that the community requires.    Local Aboriginal community leaders have met the Police Commissioner and leading government agencies to talk through some of the issues. It is an indication that solutions to the problems have to come from both sides of the fence, and it will require firm and resolute commitment from political and community leaders to pay more than lip service to the issues.    The desire to bulldoze the problems of Redfern and Aboriginal people out of sight is one that has been expressed by generations of leaders and bureaucrats for the past 215 years. But intelligent politicians understand indigenous people will not go away. Racial tensions will always be there. If we ignore them we do so at our peril.    (Senator Aden Ridgeway is indigenous affairs spokesman for the Australian Democrats).
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