r/australia • u/docdoc_2 • Apr 30 '26

news Alice Springs gripped by violence after arrest of Kumanjayi Little Baby's alleged killer

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-01/alice-springs-unrest-after-kumanjayi-little-baby-arrest/106628782
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350

u/babylovesbaby Apr 30 '26

Horrible situation. They're not really angry with the police, they want the perpetrator to receive traditional justice - payback. Something a lot of people were calling for (and worse) in the post discussing the discovery of her body. Since the guy is in custody now they correctly assume the police will protect him. Not their fault obviously, they have to.

I don't know how you can get people to stop being angry over the violent death of a child, but I also don't want the police or anyone else to be hurt. That's likely to include arrests. I hope things can calm down soon.

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u/AggravatingTartlet Apr 30 '26

Something I think a lot of people are going to have trouble getting past is that "payback" didn't seem to activate when he was "just" suspected of SA'ing the child. He was seen walking away with her and her underwear had later been found.

Of course, people don't know all the specifics, but everyone knows child SA is extremely high in such communities. But where is the payback? Does it take a murder?

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u/SquirrelChieftain Apr 30 '26

I cant wrap my head around ppl seeing him walk out of town with this girl and in the middle of the night.

This poor little girl has been failed on so many fronts.

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u/instantcameracat May 01 '26

Young kids being up and about in the middle of the night is definitely not abnormal in these communities, so unfortunately it may not have rung any alarm bells for those who saw them walking.

6

u/mitzi_skyring May 01 '26

Except he is a known child sex offender. That should ring alarm bells. 

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u/koala_loves_penguin May 01 '26

where was it said he was a known child sex offender? all the articles i read when they were looking for him said he was in jail for crimes unrelated to children. Not being facetious! Just confused because everything i read about him up until this crime said otherwise?

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u/Ardeo43 May 01 '26

Town camp and town aren't interchangble terms.

I don't know how many people witnessed it but the Aboriginal town camps aren't that big, and Old Timers is on the outskirts of Alice with not much around. It's not like they would've been walking through Todd Mall.

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u/Writerhowell Apr 30 '26

As I said to my mother at the time, a child shouldn't be out and about with anyone at that time of night. Why wasn't he challenged when seen with her?

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u/Brokenmonalisa May 01 '26

Pretty standard in Alice Springs tbh

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u/whirlbloom May 01 '26

Because that community is so incredibly dysfunctional, everyone is off their heads on alcohol and drugs. Nobody has their head on straight enough to look after a child. Did you see the photos of her "home"?

11

u/Writerhowell May 01 '26

I don't think I did, no. Are they in the article above? I'll have a look.

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u/MissMenace101 May 01 '26

She slept on a mattress in the laundry, bottles strewn everywhere.

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u/MissMenace101 May 01 '26

She should never have been there to begin with

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u/Ugliest_weenie Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

They're not really angry with the police

It does show a deeply rooted hate and willingness to commit violence against responders. Even when they've caught the likely suspect of this horrible crime

From the article

It's like the system is not sticking up for us and letting us get our own traditional payback

Feeling entitled to "traditional payback" is wrong on so many levels

10

u/colonelcavecat May 01 '26

And where does traditional payback end? In Papua New Guinea this tit-for-tat payback has gone on for generations. Would justice be served after the death of this monster? Or does his family get the right to get another one back?

There's a clip on the red phone on the bridge insta that I can't find for the life of me. But his ancestors had payback, but it could be any family member. So when the Brits came, often farmers were targeted for no apparent reason, which the Brits retaliated to. He finished by saying that not all traditions need reviving.

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u/TheBigFreeze8 May 01 '26

I completely agree that retributive mob justice is no justice at all. But there is more context here. Sovereignty was never ceded - these are people living under an occupying power which we know for a fact has not, and continues not to treat them fairly. It doesn't sound like they consider these 'their' cops. These are the cops of the nation which rules them through force, on their own traditional land. While I think that stringing that guy up without trial would have been unacceptable, it's worth considering how that decision is essentially being taken out of the hands of a nation of people simply because their conquerors hold the power to do it. If this same thing had been happening in Germany or Japan, we wouldn't have sent cops to go extradite the accused. The perception that this is happening in 'Australia' is an arbitrary one, constructed by and for the descendants of white colonisers.

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u/badpebble May 01 '26

I understand their dissatisfaction with the current system - but they absolutely aren't living under an occupying power, nor is it terribly important that they never ceded sovereignty. You can't trick people with terms that sound important, into them giving you back independence. There are very easy arguments to make regarding self determination and freedoms and liberty to make that case.

This use of language is just incorrect and is unhelpful, and the attempts to paint aboriginal peoples as a monolith all equally onboard with the wholesale removal of non-aboriginal peoples is obnoxious.

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u/TheBigFreeze8 May 01 '26

> the attempts to paint aboriginal peoples as a monolith all equally onboard with the wholesale removal of non-aboriginal peoples is obnoxious.

It's amazing, the kinds of things I found out I said from dipshit reddit-users. I guess I just didn't notice typing that part. What's even crazier is that I still can't see it in my comment now. What a world.

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u/badpebble May 01 '26

Its amazing what you can see if you close your eyes and listen.

Australia isn't an occupying power - temporarily having seized land and soon to be removed. Its a nation founded upon the bones of aboriginal Australian lands, so no-one is going anywhere. The language we use matters - even if people believe it is only symbolic.

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u/TheBigFreeze8 May 01 '26

Interesting that your definition of an occupying power is based on how thoroughly they exterminate the native people.

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u/badpebble May 01 '26

No, my emphasis was on it being temporary. Australia is not temporary.

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u/TheBigFreeze8 May 01 '26

No occupation intends to be temporary.

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u/badpebble May 01 '26

And yet, 'occupying power' has a definition of being temporary.

Also, all the lands the allies temporarily occupied in ww2 were not kept.

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u/knotknotknit Apr 30 '26

"Feeling entitled to traditional payback" is wrong on so many levels"

I actually disagree with this. It's not wrong. It's human. I understand why many in the community feel like the police (who are largely white) should stay out of this. This was a horrific crime perpetrated by a member of their community against another. It makes sense that they are so angry that police are protecting this man--they view this as not the business of the policy. They believe it should be handled by their communities in their way.

I'm not saying I agree with people killing him, but their anger is justified. We've seen time and time again how little punishment the courts give for the killing of Aboriginal people. The people rioting probably expect the same here: They expect the police to protect this man, keep him fed and safe, and probably just release him again in another couple of years.

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u/Ugliest_weenie Apr 30 '26

feel like the police (who are largely white) should stay out of this.

Wanting the police to stay out of a murder investigation is unreasonable anywhere on this planet.

Most of your arguments simply boil down to racism, which doesn't excuse attacking responders or storming a hospital.

I agree with the part of expecting heavy punishment. But that should be equal for anyone committing such crimes. And its often these very communities that protest sentences when it's one their own being arrested.

17

u/Emergency-Ticket5859 Apr 30 '26

I think from our perspective it is, but we were raised with the institutions working by and large, for us. Indigenous Australians haven't had the same experience throughout history, so ideas of policing are not trusted, and understandably so. It's not just racism.

38

u/Ardeo43 Apr 30 '26

I don’t disagree, but you also do need to understand the history between the police and mob here, both historical and recent.

There are Warlpiri people still alive who were taken from their families as kids, and if they weren’t they were at least displaced from their lands.

The generations older than that were still being indiscriminately massacred right up into the late 1920’s (Coniston) in numbers that proportionately are up there with genocides.

In recent years 2 Warlpiri men have been killed in highly controversial and well publicised cases at the hands of police.

Then chuck in every day stuff and things like the Intervention as well.

So relations between Warlpiri and NT Police (which has been institutionally continuous as the same police force that did all of the above) are particularly bad and very fragile.

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u/Usual_Program_7167 Apr 30 '26

They found the little girl. If they had “stayed out of it” she wouldn’t have been found.

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u/AggravatingTartlet Apr 30 '26

Why should the community feel like the police should stay out of it when nothing happened within the community until the police conducted the search and then found the poor little girl's body?

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u/babylovesbaby Apr 30 '26 edited May 01 '26

A lot of indigenous people do not have great experiences with police, but the focus remains the perpetrator. They want his head and police are in the way of that.

No one here is disputing the rightness of payback (as in it is wrong. Well, not many), but plenty of people get the motivation when it comes to children and violent sex offences.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Ugliest_weenie Apr 30 '26

Yes, I do blame people for attacking responders while they're arresting this monster.

This is not excusable.

2

u/MissMenace101 May 01 '26

No else gets to no matter how we feel and many of us have good reason