Latest news with #institutionalracism
South China Morning Post
13-07-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Plan for homeless shelter in Oakland's Chinatown dropped after pushback
Days before California's Oakland was expected to give its approval for a large homeless shelter to be built in Chinatown, the proposed deal is dead. Local non-profit organisation Cardea Health was lined up to run the 'interim housing' site at the Courtyard Marriott on Broadway, a US$20 million real estate deal that would convert the hotel into 150 shelter beds for those experiencing homelessness. The hotel was sold last year for US$10.6 million, a value that took a nosedive in recent years amid the local hospitality industry's decline. But business leaders in Chinatown successfully lobbied their new city council member, Charlene Wang, whose district includes the downtown neighbourhood, to pull a planned letter of support from next week's council agenda. 'To be frank, this is a perfect example of institutional racism,' Wang said in an interview about the nixed hotel-to-housing proposal. 'You're placing a shelter right beside this vulnerable population.' City leaders now have two weeks to endorse an alternate shelter site in Oakland, where crime fears and a battered economy have fuelled contentious politics among Chinatown residents in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic.
ABC News
12-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Police shooting of Kumanjayi Walker shows Australia needs 'comprehensive reform', UN says
The United Nations says Australia is facing a period of "soul-searching" and needs "comprehensive reforms" following the release of long-awaited findings from the inquest into the fatal police shooting of Indigenous man Kumanjayi Walker. Note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the names of Indigenous people who have died, used with the permission of their families. Walker, 19, was shot dead by then-police officer Zachary Rolfe during an attempted arrest in the remote outback town of Yuendumu, in central Australia, in November 2019. Mr Rolfe was acquitted of murder, manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death by an NT Supreme Court jury in Darwin in 2022. He argued he fired the shots in self-defence after Mr Walker stabbed him in the shoulder with a pair of scissors. UN rights chief Volker Turk said the Northern Territory coroner's inquiry into Mr Walker's death "uncovers disturbing allegations of institutional racism in Northern Territory policing and use of excessive force". "Findings by coroner reinforce urgent need for comprehensive reforms to address injustice suffered by First Nations peoples," Mr Turk said on X. The findings were delivered on Monday, more than five years after the shooting, and after a nearly three-year inquiry. NT coroner Elisabeth Armitage found Mr Rolfe "was racist", and that the then-police officer worked in an organisation with the hallmarks of "institutional racism", warning that there was a "significant risk" that Mr Rolfe's racism and other attitudes affected his response "in a way that increased the likelihood of a fatal outcome". She found that she could not definitively rule that Mr Rolfe's racist attitudes contributed to Mr Walker's death, however she also said it could be not ruled out. "That I cannot exclude that possibility is a tragedy for Kumanjayi's family and community who will always believe that racism played an integral part in Kumanjayi's death; and it is a taint that may stain the NT Police," she said. Mr Rolfe was dismissed from the police force a year after his trial concluded for penning an open letter criticising the coronial process and upper echelons of the NT Police Force. He rejected the coroner's findings around racism and misconduct while on duty and is considering appealing the findings. Mr Walker is one of 598 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died in custody in Australia since 1991, when detailed records began. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Mr Turk's spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, said she expected the inquiry to "lead to quite a bit of soul-searching by the authorities to take measures". Australian authorities should evaluate whether "further independent oversight" was needed, she said, also calling for "awareness-raising among police officers of the dangers of profiling, the dangers of unconscious bias". ABC/Wires
ABC News
09-07-2025
- ABC News
What will the Coroner's recommendations mean for policing in the northern Territory?
On today's program: The implications of the Coroner's findings into the death of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker are reverberating around the Northern Territory. On Monday, NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage handed down her findings in the remote community of Yuendumu where the young indigenous man died in a fatal police shooting. She's made 32 recommendations for change - many focused on the NT Police and dealing with what she called "institutionalised racism". NT Police Association President Nathan Finn says those findings aren't indicative of the entire workforce. Reporter: Sinead Mangan with Melissa Mackay in Yuendumu Pilbara suburbs dominated a recent report of locations cheaper to buy in than rent. But housing constraints and a growing population mean purchasing a house is easier said than done. The City of Karratha is investing in housing projects and has renewed policies to assist some workers with rental costs. Reporter: Mietta Adams (Karratha) CT scanners are hard to come by in rural and remote areas, where patients with serious injuries must often be transferred to major cities for imaging. Monash University hopes to change that with a new, lightweight mobile CT scanner that can conduct full-body scans and fit into a normal-sized vehicle. The university is part of a partnership trialling the technology in the United States that it hopes to bring to Australia. Reporter: Danielle Kutchel (Gippsland)
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Suman Fernando obituary
My friend and colleague Suman Fernando, who has died aged 92, had an international reputation in the field of critical psychiatry, particularly in relation to advocating for race equity in mental health. As well as being a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for more than 20 years, Suman wrote 14 books and many articles in which he consistently and methodically challenged institutional racism in British mental health provision. In his first book, Race and Culture in Society (1988), he explored the role that race and culture play in how people experience mental health issues and services. In his breakthrough 1991 book, Mental Health, Race and Culture, he challenged the dominance and singularity of the medical model, and argued that any service response for minority communities should also focus on social, cultural and institutional issues. Suman often juxtaposed the western, individualised notion of mental illness with those of the global south or indigenous healing systems that see fragmentation of community cohesion as causal, with responses that are more spiritual and community-based. It is worth noting that the relatively recent inclusion of practices such as mindfulness and yoga into mental health recovery in the west are precisely those that have underpinned indigenous models for centuries. Born in Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Suman was the son of Charles, a doctor, and his wife, Esme (nee De Mel). He attended Royal college in Colombo, then followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had both studied medicine in the UK. Studying at Cambridge University and University College hospital in London, he qualified in 1958. After briefly returning to Ceylon to work in its only psychiatric hospital, on the outskirts of Colombo, he returned in 1960 to the UK, where the following year he married Frances Lefford, whom he had first met when they were students at University College hospital. Working as an NHS psychiatrist at Chase Farm hospital in Enfield, north London, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the early 1970s, and in 1975 received an MD from the University of Cambridge based on his studies in transcultural psychiatry. He retired in 1997. Suman remained deeply connected to his Sri Lankan heritage and supported many institutions and projects in the country, in particular the People's Rural Development Association, which he played a key role in establishing in 2007. He was also a partner in the Trauma and Global Health programme organised by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which brought valuable mental health training to Sri Lanka. I first met Suman in Sri Lanka in the 90s, where we were both undertaking voluntary work. He was a kind, warm, humble and generous person who made time for everyone. He is survived by Frances, his daughter, Siri, two grandsons, Nathan and Alec, his brother Sunimal and sister Susila.
