Damning probe of Indigenous killing shows Australia needs reform: UN

Australia is facing a period of "soul searching" and needs urgent reforms after a landmark inquiry found that a police officer who killed an Indigenous teenager in 2019 was racist, the United Nations said Friday.

Nineteen-year-old Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead by a policeman during an attempted arrest in the remote outback town of Yuendumu, in central Australia.

He is one of 598 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died in custody in Australia since 1991, when detailed records began.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said the Australian coroner's inquiry into Walker's death "uncovers disturbing allegations of institutional racism in Northern Territory policing and use of excessive force".

"Findings by coroner reinforce urgent need for comprehensive reforms to address injustice suffered by First Nations peoples," Turk said on X.

The findings were delivered Monday, more than five years after the shooting.

The policeman who shot Walker, Zachary Rolfe, was found not guilty of murder in a trial in the Northern Territory capital of Darwin in 2022.

But Northern Territory coroner Elisabeth Armitage found Rolfe "was racist", delivering her conclusions after a nearly three-year inquiry.

The policeman worked in an organisation with the hallmarks of "institutional racism", she said, warning that there was a "significant risk" that Rolfe's racism and other attitudes affected his response "in a way that increased the likelihood of a fatal outcome".

Rolfe was dismissed from the police force a year after his trial concluded.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Turk's spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said she expected the inquiry to "lead to quite a bit of soul searching by the authorities to take measures".

Australian authorities should evaluate whether "further independent oversight" was needed, she said, also calling for "awareness-raising among police officers of the dangers of profiling, the dangers of unconscious bias".

The inquiry came after a royal commission in the Australian state of Victoria determined earlier this month that colonial settlers committed genocide against Indigenous people.

Mass killings, disease, sexual violence, child removal and assimilation had led to the "near-complete destruction" of Indigenous people in the state, it said.