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296 Diana Eades

Institutional processes and ideologies involved in reproducing the oppres-
sion of Aboriginal people are central to the understanding of this case. Indeed,
this case highlights the importance of power relations in intercultural communi-
cation, representing, as it does, a climax in the 200-year struggle between the
state and the Aboriginal community over the rights of police officers to remove
Aboriginal young people. To briefly summarize this: since British invasion in
the late 1700s, the police force has been used to control the movements of Abo-
riginal young people. Until the 1960s, this included the now widely known pro-
cess of forcibly removing children from their families, as part of successive
government attempts to deal with ‘the Aboriginal problem’. Although this prac-
tice is no longer carried out, it is clear from the work of criminologists that cur-
rent policing practices construct Aboriginal young people as a ‘law and order
problem’. Through selective policing, they are detained with much greater fre-
quency than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. There has been increasing op-
position from Aboriginal communities about the overpolicing of their young
people, and the struggle between Aboriginal people and the police force is in-
creasingly volatile.
Specifically in the city of Brisbane where the Pinkenba incident took place,
several episodes in this struggle are noteworthy. In November 1993, an eighteen
year old Aboriginal dancer died in police custody, after being arrested for dis-
turbing the peace. Aboriginal outrage at his death escalated into a much publi-
cized street riot. The Aboriginal community was further outraged when a Crimi-
nal Justice Commission inquiry into his death, found that it was due to natural
causes, and that no fault would be attributed to any police officers. It was less
than six months after this widespread outrage about the policing of Aboriginal
young people, that the three boys were removed by police in the Pinkenba epi-
sode. But they were not charged with an offence, or taken to a police station, and
indeed they were not in custody. This episode again stirred up considerable
community outrage, and led to an investigation by the CJC. This investigation
led to the six police officers involved being charged with unlawful deprivation
of liberty, an offence which could attract a prison sentence. Thus, the committal
hearing, in which the boys gave evidence, was charged with enormous political
significance. The struggle between the police force and the Aboriginal commu-
nity had moved from the streets to the courtroom, where language is a crucial
weapon.
The political struggle at the heart of the Pinkenba case centred on several re-
lated questions: Do police officers have the right to remove Aboriginal young
people from public places when they have not committed any offence? Do
young Aboriginal people have the right to refuse to travel in police cars when
told to do so by armed police officers, even if they are not under arrest? If they
have this right, is it realistic to expect that they can exercise this right? These are
questions about rights, freedom, the power of the police, and the role of the po-