Aborigine teen's death sparks ghetto riot

Rioters in an Aboriginal ghetto of Sydney pelted police with petrol bombs and bricks, leaving 40 officers injured, after a nine-hour street battle sparked by allegations that police chased a local teenager to his death.

Attackers set fire to a railway station at the height of overnight rioting in the Redfern neighbourhood of Australia’s most populous city, following the death of 17-year-old Aborigine Thomas Hickey.

Hickey’s mother claimed her son died yesterday when he fell from his bicycle and was impaled on a fence while being chased by police. Police denied they were chasing the teenager.

Hundreds of police in full riot gear doused the rioters with high-pressure water hoses during the fighting.

The injured police officers mostly suffered broken bones while one was knocked out after being hit by a flying brick. There was no immediate word on injuries to rioters.

Four alleged rioters were arrested and charged with involvement in the fighting. Assistant commissioner Bob Waites said they expected to make more arrests in coming days.

New South Wales state political leader Premier Bob Carr ordered an investigation into the cause of the riot and said the state coroner would probe Hickey’s death and any possible police involvement.

In the overnight rioting, about 100 attackers set fire to Redfern railway station, torched a car and smashed windows.

“They burnt out one vehicle and they in fact were throwing Molotov cocktails both at police and at Redfern railway station during the course of the riot,” Waites said.

Television images showed young men surrounding a police patrol car and slamming bricks into it from close range. It was not clear if there were officers in the car at the time.

Waites also accused the rioters of stockpiling garbage bins full of paving stones and beer bottles to throw at police.

Aboriginal community leader Lyle Munro said anger in the community had been simmering long before Hickey’s death.

“These young people are very, very upset about what happened to this young man, and they’re very upset about what’s happening to their young friends on a continual basis,” Munro told Sydney radio station 2UE. “It was a preventable death, like most of the deaths of young Aboriginal people today.”

Munro accused police of harassment of people living in a squalid grid of near-derelict houses known as “The Block.”

“This is an everyday occurrence – the harassment and intimidation of our young people,” he said. “You could interview every Aboriginal kid down there that comes from The Block, that comes from this area in Redfern in particular, and the majority will tell you to your face ... that they’ve all been bashed by the police.”

Aborigines make up 400,000 of Australia’s 20 million people. They are the poorest, least healthy and most imprisoned members of society.

The Block, a grid of run-down houses that is a virtual no-go area for people who do not live there, is notorious for heroin dealers trading openly in a park next to the railway tracks.

The houses were bought for Aborigines in the 1970s with a grant from the federal government in an attempt to alleviate homelessness and other social problems among Sydney’s Aboriginal population.

However, the streets quickly degenerated into a rubbish-strewn slum that is home to heroin addicts, alcoholics and petty criminals.

State opposition leader John Brogden said he would knock down The Block if he were in power.

“The fact that 40 or 50 police were injured whilst they stood there and copped it from young Aboriginal thugs and others is an unacceptable position going forward,” Brogden said. “I’d bring the bulldozers in because I think allowing this to happen every couple of years, which is what’s going to happen, will never fix the problem.”