Still Standing: A Note to Readers of Blak and Black

Some of you have been reading this blog since its earliest days. You know the history. You know what was attempted. This is a brief note to tell you that it failed.

In 2013, matters were before the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The ACT Government planted an affidavit in the proceedings. The tribunal transcript was altered – a fact demonstrable by placing the two versions, obtained separately by two different lawyers, side by side. The alterations are not subtle. They are substantive. This is not allegation. This is provable.

In 2015, an officer of the Australian Federal Police contacted me to inform me that I had filed a forged affidavit in the tribunal proceedings. I told the officer concerned, in plain terms, that this was nonsense. No affidavit was ever filed. We were timed out before it could be filed. At the time it was meant to be lodged, it was still being settled by a barrister. What the AFP was presenting as my “affidavit” was a document my legal team had never seen. Not a draft. Not a working copy. Nothing. A 54-page affidavit bearing my name, of which not a single page existed anywhere in the files of the solicitors or barrister who were handling my matter. Think about what that means. A document of that length and specificity does not write itself. Someone prepared it. It was not my lawyers. It was not me. And yet there it was, with my name on it, being presented by the AFP and the ACT DPP as the basis for a criminal prosecution.

I pointed out, among other things, that the document contained extensive legal argument. No solicitor drafts an affidavit of this nature that way. Mine was being prepared by a solicitor, reviewed by a second solicitor, and settled by a barrister – a process that had not yet concluded when we were timed out, and which produced nothing that anyone, at any point, had in their possession. The suggestion that three experienced legal practitioners would collectively commit errors that a first-year law student would avoid is not serious. I also noted that as a Jewish person I would not swear on a Bible. I would make an affirmation. The document the AFP was relying on showed a sworn oath. That detail alone told me something about who had prepared it. Someone who did not know all of my details.

Despite all of this, the AFP and the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions forced the matter to trial. In the lead-up, the DPP’s office advised my barrister that when – NOT IF— I was convicted, they would be seeking a minimum custodial sentence of eight years. Eight years for a “crime” they fully knew that I didn’t commit. I was also to take down this website and concede publicly that Angel Marina had never engaged in any racist conduct.

In 2017, I won. 16-0 in the ACT Supreme Court.

That result needs to be understood in context. Near the beginning of the trial, my barrister said to me, “This is going to be a difficult trial. This judge isn’t interested in giving you a fair trial. He’s only interested in not being appealed.” I have had that observation on this site since 2019. I repeat it now because it matters. I won 16-0 before a judge my own barrister believed was not interested in giving me a fair hearing. The evidence favouring me was simply too strong and too thoroughly documented to be disposed of any way other than acquittal.

Blak and Black is still here. It has been online for 16 years. It has been 9 years since the trial concluded. During the trial itself, Blak and Black remained online. And during the trial it was proven – not alleged, proven – that Angel Marina did commit the acts of racism I had always said he did. The evidence included a psychologist’s report documenting the mental harm his conduct caused to his target, who sought professional help as a direct consequence. Both the AFP and the DPP knew of this report, as it had previously been put into evidence. Both tried to suppress it. The DPP’s opening statement was that there had never been any racism, and that we were pursuing Angel Marina because we were jealous of his football career. His football career was, on the evidence, negligible. The racism was documented from a letter of 9 May 2002, through to a lawyer’s letter to the ACT Government of April 2003 placing them on notice, through to a Public Interest Disclosure of 27 June 2003, through to correspondence with Meredith Whitten, Director Corporate Services, ACT Department of Treasury. All of it was there. Much of it the DPP attempted to suppress. The most important document – the one that proved Tu Pham, Chief Executive, ACT Department of Treasury at the time all this was occurring, had lied on oath – only came into my legal team’s hands near the end of the trial when a decent AFP officer handed it to my barrister. Nothing was done about the perjury. Nothing was done about the false documents the ACT Government had placed into evidence.

But they lost.

My victory came at a significant price – $500k plus in legal fees – significant personal physical and psychological damage.

There is also a matter from 2003 that has never been fully aired. The ACT Department of Treasury significantly altered a report from the Commonwealth Public Service Commission and then deployed the altered version as if it were genuine. I can prove this. The alteration was deliberate. The purpose was racist. The documentation exists.

I am not a coward. I have never been a coward. What was deployed against me over more than a decade – the fabricated affidavit, the planted tribunal documents, the altered transcript, the threat of eight years imprisonment, the demand that I silence this publication and recant – was a sustained attempt to destroy an Indigenous man who refused to be silent. It did not work then. It will not work now.

The material gathered by the IAAR – approximately two thousand victim statements and more than eight thousand supporting statements, independently corroborated – is progressing toward the United Nations Human Rights Committee. It was always going to get there. The attempt to imprison me and shut down this platform was, among other things, an attempt to prevent that submission. The attempt failed. The submission is still coming.

Blak and Black began in 2010 with a simple conviction: that the truth, documented and persistent, is harder to kill than any individual. Sixteen years later, that conviction is undiminished.

We are still here.

Bakchos
Blak and Black
May 2026

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