Violence out of control in Central Australia

Anti-violence campaigners in Central Australia on Friday expressed their increasingly concerns on the commit acts of terrible violence in their local area.

A campaign launched by Indigenous men in Central Australia few months ago, aims to do something to stop the endless cycles of misery caused by violence. Earlier in September, hundreds of Aboriginal men have marched through Alice Springs under the banner of Stop the Violence.

According to ABC News, there were 455 violent assaults in the first three months of this year, which has doubled the numbers of assault in the past six years in Alice Springs.

The murder rate is very high and payback revenge was being used as an excuse for endless feuds between individuals and groups of young men.

According to Bob Durnan, who has been working in Central Australia for 33 years, violence has become a major problem for the region's communities.

"Young fellas who drink get all fired up about the need to avenge some real or imagined slight or sorcery, or whatever, and go and assault and often stab people who are trying to sleep or lead a normal life," Durnan told ABC News on Friday.

"You get case after case going through the courts and cycles going on in the communities of payback for that kind of activity.

"A lot of them end up in jail now (and) there's quite a few in the cemetery."

The chairwoman of the Northern Territory Government's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council, Bess Nungarrayi Price, said what is known as next-of-kin payback is out of control.

"If they don't find the right person that they want to carry out the payback on, or the revenge out on, they get the next person, which is either your sister, brother, uncle, nephew," Price said, adding "it just happens out of the blue if you're the person in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Ingkintja Men's Health Center in Alice Spring was also running a media campaign in several languages, funded by the Commonwealth Government, asking men to seek help for their behaviour and learn other ways to solve their problems.

Source: Xinhua