11 June 202121 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Deaths in custody: Australian mother takes fight to the UN

source: BBC News
published:10 June 2021

Australian mother Leetona Dungay and a team of high-profile lawyers will take a claim over her son’s death in custody to the United Nations. Indigenous man David Dungay Jr died after being restrained by five prison officers in a Sydney cell in 2015.

The complaint argues Australia violated his human rights and failed to protect his life. The legal team is also seeking to put pressure on the government over its record on Indigenous deaths in custody. Aboriginal people have the highest rate of incarceration of any group in the world.

20 March 202115 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Celia Stubbs, partner of Blair Peach, to appear at Undercover Inquiry

source: Big Issue North
published: 15 March 2021

Celia Stubbs, whose partner Blair Peach was killed by police 42 years ago, hopes her appearance at the Undercover Policing Inquiry will help her discover why she was spied on for decades.

Stubbs, 81, and still active politically by supporting refugees and asylum seekers, is among thousands of political activists that members of the London Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) highlighted for attention from 1968 onwards. Targets included women, with whom officers sometimes had relationships and children.

7 February 202115 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Biden moves to end justice contracts with private prisons

source: New York Times
published: 26 January 2021

President Biden signed executive orders on Tuesday to end Justice Department contracts with private prisons and increase the government’s enforcement of a law meant to combat discrimination in the housing market, part of the new administration’s continued focus on racial equity.

Mr. Biden also signed orders that make it the federal government’s policy to “condemn and denounce” discrimination against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, who have faced harassment since the coronavirus pandemic spread from China to the US, and to strengthen relationships between the government and Native American tribes.