On March 19, 1994 an independent Workers Inquiry convened in Brisbane to uncover the truth of how Daniel Yock died.
On November 7, 1993 18 year old Daniel Yock’s lifeless body was dispatched to the South Brisbane watchhouse. In broad daylight and before multiple witnesses, police tackled Daniel from behind and threw him down. Daniel sustained a violent blow to his head. Apparently unconscious, Daniel’s hands were cuffed behind as he lay face down on the ground. He was then dragged to the waiting paddy wagon where he was dumped, again face down, with his hands still cuffed.
Daniel was the 52nd Aborigine to die in police custody in the four years since the cut-off of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
As soon as Yock was pronounced dead the machinations of a cover-up of the killing were set into motion, organised by the police, the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), the Goss Labor Government as well as the Aboriginal leadership.
The CJC investigation into the death was a systematic whitewash, designed to exonerate the six police officers involved. The head of the CJC inquiry into Yock’s death was Commissioner Lewis Wyvill QC, a safe pair of hands. He had examined all 27 Aboriginal deaths in custody in Queensland between 1980 and 1989. He found that no criminal charges would be laid despite damning evidence of murder either by violence or gross negligence.
This volume is the record of the campaign conducted by the Socialist Labor League (precursor to the Socialist Equality Party) and the Committee for a Workers Inquiry. Conducted in the face of strenuous efforts by the state to silence it, the Workers inquiry exposes the cause of Yock’s death, the elaborate cover-up organised by the police, the Goss government and the Aboriginal leadership.
See also