Following the death of Thomas Hickey, a 17 year-old Aborigine of Redfern, gasoline bombs and rocks rain down on the Sydney ghetto also known as "The Block." A train station burns down. Cars are in flames.

The boy fell off his bicycle and was impaled through the neck on a fence on Saturday; he died on Sunday. His family, friends, and a number of eyewitnesses blame police for his death, saying that he was being chased by a police patrol, a claim denied by officers.

The reasons for the riot went deeper than the boy's death. The crisis in housing and health care that is crippling indigenous communities is what fuels the sort of resentment that exploded Sunday. Aborigines live on average 20 years less than other Australians. The rate of unemployment is 40%. Aborigines make up 20 percent of the nation's prison population, despite numbering only 2 percent of the nation's whole.

The Block in Redfern is one of the highest profile symbols of Aboriginal inequality. Much of this is due to its prime location, just one train stop from Sydney's Central Station. Nearby upscale neighborhoods have been gentrified while The Block has crumbled into a garbage-strewn slum.

John Brogden, senior member of Prime Minister's John Howard Liberal Party, said the only way to clean up The Block was to knock it down. In his own words, "I'd bring the bulldozers in because I think allowing this to happen every couple of years, which is what's going to happen, will never fix the problem."



***For further developments and the Sydney community's reactions, go to sydney.indymedia.org/