SYDNEY: About 200 people, some armed with spears, knives and sticks, rioted in an Australian outback aboriginal town after an argument in a tavern, police said on Tuesday.
Fighting between feuding two families started on Monday night in the tavern at Aurukun, an isolated aboriginal community in northern Queensland state, and when the brawl spilled out onto the street, onlookers joined in the fighting.
"The argument started in the tavern and moved onto the street where about 200 people, some armed with spears, sticks and knives, started fighting," a police spokesman told Reuters, adding one man suffered head injuries.
About 15 people were armed with spears, sticks and knives and it took several hours to stop the fighting, said police. Five people were charged following the riot, the third in the community in the past year.
The fighting in Aurukun is being fuelled by alcohol abuse in the isolated community, say local Aborigines.
Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up 2 percent of the 20 million population and have a life expectancy 17 years less than white Australians. They have far higher rates of unemployment, imprisonment, alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence.
Police Inspector Russell Rhodes said tensions in the aboriginal community had been high for several years.
"From time to time we enjoy very peaceful passages of time, up to six months, but at other times the most minor thing can trigger a dispute and the two families involved on this occasion have reignited some differences," Rhodes told local media.
"This time it is over a personality conflict between two men in the tavern and a third party. Hopefully we can restore some calm to Aurukun," he said.
A report this year found a "river of grog" or alcohol was destroying black communities in the Northern Territory and fuelling violence against women and children.
The government sent police and troops to stop the violence and banned alcohol in the aboriginal camps.
In an effort to stem alcohol abuse the Aurukun Shire Council runs the town's only tavern, decrees all alcohol must be consumed in the tavern, and has banned alcohol being brought into town.
But "grog runners" brought alcohol into Aurukun on a boat in September, fuelling a riot by some 200 people, said local media.
Supplying alcohol to aboriginal communities is big business, just like the prohibition-era in the United States, with a case of beer selling for up to A$120 (US$105), compared with a normal retail price of about A$40, said the Courier-Mail newspaper.
Aurukun leaders have told the media that alcohol is "tearing them apart". An Aurukun man was jailed last Thursday for 20 months after biting a police officer's thumb and tearing his shirt sleeve off in a struggle outside the tavern.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2007/12/04/asia/OUKWD-UK-AUSTRALIA-ABORIGINES-RIOT.php
Topic: Aborigines armed with spears riot in Australia town (Read 3242 times)