Aboginal Communities

Gang violence has turned the remote indigenous community of Wadeye into a war zone. Scores of Aborigines have fled their homes and are living in squalid refugee-like camps as two rival gangs, the Evil Warriors and the Judas Priests, fight for control of the Northern Territory's largest black town.

Even the gang leaders have voiced concern. "Somebody's going to die," said one of the leaders of the Evil Warriors. "What can we do? That other mob attacks us with rocks, boulders, spears and anything else they can get hold of."

Wadeye, formerly the Catholic mission of Port Keats, has been plagued by warring gangs for years but recently the violence has started to increase.

Rioters in recent months have caused more than $450,000 worth of damage to houses and other property.

"Our cry is for help," said one woman. "Seeing what's happening, my eyes are never dry. I hear the screams at night . terrified women and children . It has never been like this before. Our kids are not safe."  She blamed the problem on the lack of police and a lack of resources. "When there's trouble around here and I call the police to come and protect my mob they never come," she said. "Where are the resources that the politicians kept promising us?"

Almost half of Wadeye's 2500 people are under 15 and cannot speak English. Life expectancy is 20 years less than that of non-indigenous Australians and an acute housing shortage - set to worsen over the next 20 years - means an average of 20 people to a house. The camps, created in response to the recent bouts of violence, lend an air of Third World poverty to the town.

Wadeye's only doctor said the violence had put the town's 1300 children at risk. "Australia should be ashamed at what's happening in remote indigenous communities," h e said. "We as Australians need to stand up with these people to reclaim their town from the groups that are trying to destroy it." He said the Health Department had told him not to speak about a six year-old rape victim.

Three years ago Wadeye was chosen as a trial site for what politicians called a "bold experiment" to fix disadvantage in remote indigenous communities. They called it the Indigenous Communities Co-ordination Pilots program under the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) umbrella. Ministers, bureaucrats, MPs and the Prime Minister, John Howard, arrived in droves. The COAG trial however never improved the delivery of basic services as promised.

Locals said "The gang violence was a symptom of much deeper issues that elders had been trying to get governments to tackle for many years. The gangs to some extent are militia for various interest groups," they said, adding that unresolved issues, such as land tenure, was fuelling the violence.

The public was confused by the Territory's legal system. "There's no real enforcement of the Child Welfare Act, for example," they said. "We have the Government saying there are laws in place but the people here see that they are not enforced."

Wadeye's problems have also created tensions in the Northern Territory Government, with questions being asked about the Territory's discretionary spending of federal grants earmarked for remote communities. An internal Government paper suggests that federal money that is supposed to be spent in remote communities is being redirected to projects that mostly benefit non-indigenous people, such as a $160 million wharf convention complex in Darwin.

The average Territory child gets double the education funding than a child from Wadeye, a recent report found. The co-principal of Wadeye's school, said only about 100 of the community's 880 children of school age were turning up for classes. "We need outside help . not Band-Aid solutions, but real help," he said. "There is sheer frustration here. Everybody's scared."