David Dungay’s death in custody will be referred to the UN Human Rights Committee | Death in custody

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International human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson to take David Dungay’s death in custody case to the United Nations, arguing that Australia violated his human rights and those of his family by denying them justice and responsibility for his death in prison in 2015.

London-based Robertson’s Doughty Street Chambers will file the complaint on behalf of the Dungay family with the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva. They will say that Australia did not protect his right to life and did not investigate anyone or any organization responsible for his death.

They call on the UN to recommend that “the Australian state and its institutions investigate and, if there is sufficient evidence, prosecute, try and, where appropriate, punish any person or organization responsible for the deaths of First Nations in custody. , to end the continued impunity for deaths in custody to ensure Australia meets its international human rights obligations under the right to life.

Doughty Street Chambers lawyer Jennifer Robinson told Guardian Australia it was important for Australia to be held internationally accountable for its failure to implement the Royal Commission recommendations in 1991, and to address “the current crisis of the disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous Australians and the unacceptably high rate of Indigenous deaths in custody”.

Robinson said the Dungay family will ask the UN to determine whether Australia has complied with its international human rights obligations in the case of his death in prison in 2015.

“But in raising the case of David, we are raising the historic and systemic failures of the Australian government to implement the findings of the Royal Commission and to take and adopt the recommendations of various UN bodies over the past two decades.” , said Robinson.

“We hope that with this complaint… the Australian government will take the necessary steps to resolve this issue.”

David Dungay died in Long Bay Prison Hospital in 2015, after five guards rushed into his cell and pinned him face down for refusing to stop eating a packet of cookies. The guards dragged him to another cell, then held him face down again and injected him with a sedative. Dungay said 12 times that he couldn’t breathe before he passed out and died.

Four years later, the coroner found that none of the five guards who held Dungay should be disciplined and that their conduct was “limited by systemic inefficiencies in training.”

After reviewing the case, a prominent criminal lawyer, Phillip Boulten SC, said that the use of force by the guards was “illegal” and carried risks of serious harm, and informed the family that “there is a reasonable prospect of conviction ”.

But the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions said he could not pursue the case because she had not been fired by NSW Police or another statutory body with investigative powers or of inquisition, like the coroner’s court.

Her mother, Leetona Dungay, said the family was stepping onto the international stage to “shame our government and take action.”

“My son had the right to live. He had the right to be out of harm’s way, ”she said. “And I have a right to hold account and justice for what happened to David. The government and the prison had a duty to keep David safe, with properly trained people to keep him alive. They failed and David lost his life because of their failure.

“I want the world to know that Australia does not protect the rights of indigenous peoples. So many indigenous people have died in custody, but not a single police officer or prison guard has been convicted of these deaths. “

At least 474 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have died in police custody and in prison since the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody issued its final report in 1991.

Guardian Australia has spent the past three years tracking Indigenous and non-Indigenous deaths in custody for Project Deaths Inside.

The first time we published, in August 2018, an exclusive 10-year analysis of coronary data found that 407 Indigenous people had died in custody or in prison since the end of the royal commission in 1991. In 2019, that figure had increased to 424.

By April of this year, it had risen to 474. At least five of those deaths have occurred since the beginning of March this year.

“Leetona Dungay shouldn’t have to travel to Geneva to seek justice,” said Dungay family lawyer George Newhouse.

“The NSW government can still take action. The Attorney General and the Prime Minister must open an investigation and they must listen to the 113,000 people who signed the petition calling for justice and accountability. There must be a way for the families of those who have died in custody to hold them to account. “

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