In 2004 and aboriginal man died in police custody after being arrested for being drunk.

This happened on a remote island with a large Indigenous population. Protests broke out and the police acted with impunity against the aboriginal protesters.

Now, as the Telegraph reports:

Several hundred Aborigines on a remote island in Australia are seeking compensation for the racist actions of the police in a landmark £23 million class action that has been likened to Germany’s reparations to Holocaust victims.

In an unusual move, Australia’s Federal Court has given notice to the indigenous residents of Palm Island – a tropical island off the north-east coast – that they can seek to claim damages for the racist conduct of the Queensland state police during riots there in 2004.

The notice says any Aboriginal person living on the island between November 19 2004 and March 25 2010 who was “affected by the police response” may be entitled to compensation.

About 95 per cent of the community’s 3,000-odd population is indigenous.

Stewart Levitt, a lawyer acting for the community, said he believed the action on behalf of an entire community was unprecedented in Australia, and possibly the world. He said he expected up to 400 people to be entitled to compensation and about 320 had already registered to join the action.

Australian activists are protesting for Mulrunji’s justice at Sydney’s Townhall, 22 June 2007
Australian activists protesting for Mulrunji’s justice at Sydney’s Townhall, 22 June 2007 CREDIT: AFP
“I can’t think of anything similar where the entire population of a town or an enclave has brought an action such as this,” he told The Telegraph.

“It is probably without much precedent in the world, perhaps the closest comparison is to the reparations to the Jews at the end of World War II… The way in which black people were treated on Palm Island was so out of kilter compared to how a situation would have been handled in a Brisbane suburb occupied by white Australians.”

The class action notice, released by the court last Friday, follows a decision last December that found the police “acted with impunity” during the 2004 riots on the island, about 40 miles north of the mainland city of Townsville.

The riots followed the death of Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old Aboriginal man who was in police custody after being arrested for being drunk.

Read the full article here.