Andrew Bolt: Black Lives Matter protesters ignore truth on David Dungay’s death
Race-baiters would have you believe that David Dungay is a symbol of the “racism” in our legal system. Yet the left and the media shy away from the fact he was a violent thief and woman beater who died in a struggle with warders trying to stop him eating himself to death, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Tuesday’s Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney was stopped by police before it started, yet still worked its poison.
That’s because it was a cliffhanger story for weeks — will it go ahead in this pandemic? — and the media gave its organisers a huge platform.
Boy, did they use it to spread their toxic story that police and prison guards were racists, murdering Aborigines who shouldn’t even be in jail.
The main organiser, Paddy Gibson, appeared on Channel 10’s The Project this week to claim — unchallenged — that we “continue to incarcerate 10-year-old Aboriginal children” and “torture” them.
He went on: “Particularly in the case of David Dungay … Charge the guards that killed David Dungay Jr!”
Dungay’s name is now everywhere in the media. As The Guardian Australia said, “Dungay’s 2015 death in custody has become a symbol of the Australian Black Lives Matter movement” because this poor “26-year-old Dunghutti man died after five guards rushed his cell to stop him eating biscuits”.
The media left kept repeating this line — guards killed an Aborigine just for eating biscuits — which helped to damn what three academics in the taxpayer-funded Conversation this week called our “racialised policing and custodial practices” and “discriminatory over-policing” of Aborigines.
Here is the Sydney Morning Herald: “Dungay died inside the prison hospital complex in 2015 when guards stormed his cell because he refused to stop eating a packet of biscuits.”
SBS: “Prison staff ordered him to stop eating biscuits. When he refused, guards … held him down.”
The ABC: “Dungay died … after five guards restrained him and gave him a powerful sedative.”
But all these reports left out three important facts that make Dungay a symbol not of the racism of our legal system, but of the race-baiting of the modern left.
First, none told you anything about this Paddy Gibson that they treated as an authority on our treatment of Aborigines.
In fact, he’s an activist from the Marxist Solidarity movement who’s tweeted that police are “pigs” and his “whole life is dedicated to campaigning against Australian values”, which he defined as “genocide, apartheid, imperialism (and) white supremacy”.
He once described the Russian Revolution — which imposed a murderous tyranny — as “one of the most profound acts of human liberation in history”.
Then there’s a second thing those reports didn’t mention: the reason Dungay was in jail.
Dungay already had a lengthy criminal record, including robberies with violence and a weapon, before he was jailed for the attempted rape of his girlfriend, just 16.
He’d tried to sodomise her, then beat her with a broomstick, chased her with a brick and punched her in the head.
Dungay was also jailed over an armed robbery. He and three mates broke into a house, where they found a 61-year-old man, his sick wife and his 91-year-old mother in law. They bashed and stabbed the man so badly that he needed 27 stitches.
Why do many journalists omit this background? It doesn’t justify Dungay’s death, but does show he wasn’t jailed just because of “over policing” or racist police.
Finally, to the most important fact missing from those reports.
No, Dungay was not killed by racist guards just for eating biscuits.
He had chronic schizophrenia, was acutely psychotic, and had bad diabetes. His blood sugar level had been tested and was at dangerous levels.
So when he was spotted eating biscuits he had to be stopped.
But Dungay wouldn’t stop, got agitated and fought the warders, so they held him down while a nurse sedated him. It’s all on video.
Tragically, Dungay died, but the coroner ruled no one was to blame: he’d been an unhealthy man whose heart gave out in the stress and struggle.
As the coroner put it: Dungay has comorbidities “which predisposed him to the risk of cardiac arrhythmia such as longstanding poorly controlled type I diabetes, hyperglycaemia, prescription of antipsychotic medication … elevated body mass index, a degree of likely hypoxaemia caused by prone restraint, and extreme stress and agitation as a result of the events”.
So this is the real “symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement”: a violent thief and woman beater who dies in a struggle with warders trying to stop him eating himself to death.
This the case that Black Lives Matter claims shows our police and warders are racists who kill Aborigines just for eating biscuits.
Yet almost no journalists challenged that smear. Nor did the Prime Minister or NSW Premier.
The protest was stopped but the protesters won.