Palm Island warning over funeral

Locals on Australia's Palm Island are warning police to stay away from the funeral of an Aboriginal man whose death sparked violent protests.

They are waiting for the results of a second autopsy on Cameron Doomagee, which will hopefully provide more evidence about how we died.

Results from the first, which showed he died of a punctured lung while in custody, sparked last Friday's unrest.

Police said he was hurt when he fell as they arrested him for drunkenness.

Correspondents say that the funeral later this week of Doomagee is being seen as another potential flashpoint.

But a former Palm Island council chairman, Robert Blackley, warned that police were not welcome there.

"They [funerals] are for family, they are for friends, they are not for police officers because any police officer that turns up at the funeral is only going to be a target," he was quoted as saying by Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Revenge threat

Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner, who is a cousin of Doomagee's, said the police should drop charges against 18 people on the island over the protests, or face "payback" - 'eye for an eye'-style vengeance.

"If we're not going to get [justice] through white law, we will take it through our own means, through Aboriginal law, which has payback," he said.

Seventeen men and a 14-year-old boy appeared in court in Australia's Queensland state on Monday, charged with various offences including arson.

The police station and courthouse on Palm Island were burned to the ground during Friday's protest.

Over the years many displaced Aborigines were taken to Palm Island, and it is now one of Australia's largest Aboriginal communities - home to about 3,000 people.

As with many other Aboriginal communities, it suffers high rates of alcohol abuse, unemployment and domestic violence. It was once described by the Guinness Book of Records as the most violent place in the world, outside a combat zone.

Friday's violence follows a serious outbreak of racial rioting in Sydney in February, when more than 40 police were injured in a riot sparked by the death of an Aboriginal teenager.

Police were cleared of having caused the death of the boy.