WA unions support appeal to 'send Kerry home'
By Kath Mallot
PERTH — The WA Trades and Labour Council has voted unanimously to support a national campaign which will put pressure on states and territories to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, particularly the recommendation that Aboriginal prisoners should be placed in an institution as close as possible to the place of his or her family.
Kerry Wayne Jones is an Aboriginal man currently in prison in far north Queensland. He comes from New South Wales. Jones has appealed to Queensland authorities to transfer him to a prison near his family in NSW. He was initially told that he would be allowed to transfer, but it now appears that this decision is being deliberately blocked within the system, either in Queensland or NSW.
Kerry needs to be near his family, which he has rediscovered after being torn from them at the age of eight.
Like so many other Aboriginal children, Kerry was stolen into a white society which never wanted him in the first place, a white society with its own special agenda for Aboriginal children.
The final indictment of the white policy of forced assimilation must be, that of the 99 deaths in custody which were examined by the royal commission, 45 of those deaths were Aboriginals who were taken away from their families as children.
To support Kerry's appeal, write to: Minister for Justice John Hannaford, Good Sell Building, Chifley Square, Sydney, NSW 2000; and Minister for Corrective Services Glenn Milliner, PO Box 195 North Quay, Brisbane Qld.