Race riots in Sydney

[Pekka]

I know man, I know.. .. But this is too late for them. It's too late now.. it's gotten out of then hands, the mobs already in the move. That line has been crossed.

You don't see that stuff happening in here. Why? I have pre-emptively taught attitude lessons

[Footie Mad]

They should just have a huge showdown featuring all the "tough guys", prefferably without weapons just fighting and no kicking of people who are down. It's remarkable how a good fight can ease the tension sometimes. But this hardly seems like a "honest" fight more it involves *******s who see a chance to be part of a group and humiliate, stab, shoot and get their aggression out.

Maybe the should take a lesson from football hooligans.

[Alexander's Horse]

Basically the problem has always been outsiders coming in and making trouble.

I'm sure there's fault on both sides but take Gerard Duff. He's one of the nicest and gentlest young men you'd ever hope to meet. He was set upon by a gang in Cronulla Park a few years ago, an Islander gang, and bashed, attacked from behind.

Now that incident upset the literally hundreds of local people who know Gerard, including me. There was a boil over like this shortly after.

The volunteer lifeguards are like local heroes, noone touches them. Am I surprised there's been a reaction again? No. Is it because they are Lebanese? No. Its because a lifeguard was bashed.

The Police Station in Cronulla was closed a few years ago. There weren't these problems when there was a stronger Police presence around the beaches.

[Pekka]

footie mad, right, except I don't agree with not kicking whne people are down. My strategy involves stomping the head. Not when people are uncoscious though, but when they are on their back, ready to fight more if you give thme the chance. I say stomping is good, and kicking the face a downed opponent is perfectly cool. Unless it's 10-1, then it's not cool.

Also I would think about weaponry rules, why ban everything? Let's ban knives and firearms and anything that has sharp edges. Blunt weapons OK. Yes?

[Dracon II]

Some pictures courtesy of the BBC

Some of Australia's worst racial violence in history erupted on Sunday as thousands gathered on Cronulla Beach, Sydney.

Police and ambulance workers were pelted with beer cans and bottles. Trouble spread overnight to other suburbs.

Police rushed to protect people at risk of assault, as the alcohol-fuelled violence left at least 30 people injured.

[Alexander's Horse]

I've just been reading up - apparently shock jocks were inciting people to go down there. Typical, wasn't even a local affair. Outsiders on both sides.

[Pekka]

what is a shock jock?

Anyway, I've done tough talking here, kind of advocating violence and beating down people. Well, let's make it very clear that I did not mean ganging up on individuals who are of certain race and appearanec, and attacking them, innocent people. Like the first pic, you know, that's disgusting.

The gangs! The ones who are asking for it.. they should get it.

Dracon, that first pic is funny in your last pic post it looks like everyone is having fun .. plus the first guy is priceless with the bottle, reminds me of that crazy dude in trainspotting !!!!

[Dracon II]

That and several white supremacist groups... including skinheads from Newcastle. Witness the power of sms and email... the conflict was more than local before it even began.

[Dracon II]

Dracon, that first pic is funny in your last pic post it looks like everyone is having fun .. plus the first guy is priceless with the bottle, reminds me of that crazy dude in trainspotting !!!!

Threatening a policeman with a beer bottle is one thing. Being caught by BBC in the act is another. Crazy guy.

Some articles from The Australian:

Race warfare
divides city
Simon Kearney and Jennifer Sexton
December 13, 2005

SYDNEY exploded into a second night of race warfare as tensions between rival ethnic gangs escalated into a series of late-night revenge attacks on white Australian males across the south and west of the city.

Shots were fired as groups of young men from western Sydney picked fights in and near Cronulla, the scene of Sunday's ugly mob attacks on anyone of Middle Eastern appearance.

Police made at least six arrests, and a number of people were injured, amid reports of local residents being targeted by the gangs in assaults from Cronulla to Punchbowl, in the west.

The violence has been fuelled by a series of text messages urging revenge attacks for the assaults on men and women of Middle Eastern appearance by a 5000-strong crowd at Cronulla on Sunday.

A separate series of text messages call on locals to defend Sydney's suburban beach strip.

The new wave of violence broke out as police promised to hunt down suspected right-wing instigators of the violent outbreaks and debate raged over the reasons behind the vicious assaults.

John Howard was forced to reject suggestions that government warnings about homegrown terrorists fuelled the rampage, as academics blamed talkback radio and the influence of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

Police, who set up a 24-hour command unit ready to deploy tactical units in force to any troublespot, fear both sides are preparing for a massive confrontation this Sunday, with Cronulla and Maroubra, in the city's south and east, considered flashpoints.

As white supremacist groups admitted involvement, political, religious and community leaders united in condemnation of Sunday's violence.

Of the 14 men and two youths arrested on Sunday on a total of 42 charges -- including assault, affray, malicious damage and possession of a knife -- 12 were from Sutherland Shire, one was from Bondi Junction and three were from southwest and western Sydney suburbs. A further three men face charges of attempted murder after allegedly stabbing a 20-year-old man.

Far-Right groups accused of links to neo-Nazis have admitted mobilising more than 100 people to join the mob of drunken people on the rampage at Cronulla.

Three ultra right-wing organisations -- Australia First, the Patriotic Youth League and the Newcastle-based skinhead group Blood and Honour -- handed out pamphlets at the rally.

The NSW secretary of Australia First, Jim Saleam, said his members had recruited up to 120 people, but he denied any involvement in violence and said his group played no part in the text-message campaign.

"Rather than say that one supports what people did, all I'd say to you is: I wouldn't condone it, but I wouldn't condemn it," Dr Saleam said.

The NSW Government, stunned by the ferocity of Sunday's attacks, launched measures to combat a feared escalation.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma announced the creation of a taskforce to hunt down suspected right-wing instigators, and raised the possibility of recalling parliament to give police more powers.

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney promised a review of tactics -- even the possibility of using water cannons -- to break up unruly crowds.

"We have witnessed this weekend amongst the worst violence that I have ever seen in my policing service of 40 years," he said. "Never in my working life did I ever imagine a mob, a drunken mob, turning on a woman, an innocent woman, who happened to stray into their path." Ethnic politics academic James Jupp, from the Australian National University, said people in the area had seen a resurgence of nationalist, racist politics.

"People don't normally walk around with an Australian flag in their pocket," he said, adding that 10 years of talkback radio incitement in Sydney, and Cronulla's unique position as a "white ghetto", were to blame.

NSW Police Minister Carl Scully said a small number of white supremacists were involved and they had "no place in mainstream Australian society".

But while the Prime Minister, who is heading off on a trip to Asia, warned of the dangers of "tribalism", he repeatedly deflected questions of whether Sunday's violence involved racism.

"I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country," Mr Howard told journalists.

NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam challenged the Government to recall parliament this week to introduce tougher laws.

He claimed the Government was in denial in not realising that many communities were controlled by ethnic gangs, and called for the end of a "softly, softly" approach by police.

Mr Moroney denied that his officers had taken such an approach to crowd control or that they had miscalculated the anger in Cronulla.

Fadi Rahman, who runs the Icra Youth Centre at Lidcombe, said a "racial vendetta" was at the centre of the violence and that revenge attacks would continue. "Unless something is done, this is going to turn into another Paris riot," Mr Rahman said.

Payback drives beachside hit
Simon Kearney
December 13, 2005

FIRED with anger, the drivers heading to Cronulla were nothing like the Sunday beach-lovers of just a fortnight ago.

Carload after carload of young men raced from Lakemba in Sydney's southwest, ignoring speed limits and bent on revenge.

They were followed by at least 12 police cars travelling at speed, lights blazing and sirens wailing.

Within 20 minutes, just after 10pm, the unruly convoy, which massed in the afternoon with thousands of men at Lakemba mosque, had reached Cronulla.

The scene in the beachside suburb was one of momentary madness as the gangs of men avenged Sunday's riots, mobbing innocent pedestrians and cruising the foreshore and backstreets to attack people, cars and shops.

One man, simply putting out his garbage on Kurnell Rd, three blocks back from the beach, was hit in the head by a large object. He lay on the ground surrounded by shocked family members as fire officers bandaged his head, waiting for ambulances to arrive.

On Eoulera Rd, car windows and shopfronts were smashed by groups of youths with sticks and bats in lightning attacks.

"We were at the beach. Two car loads of Lebs pulled up. They just started smashing cars. We ran for our lives," said local woman Rebecca.

Another local, Ryan, said he heard gunshots before four carloads of youths smashed the windows of six cars and three shopfronts on the corner of Eoulera and Hume roads.

"There were four cracks that sounded like a pistol," he said. "They smashed all the car windows and then did U-turns and they all took off."

Near the North Cronulla Beach kiosk, police pulled over three car loads of youths and made them lie face down on the road. Their yells of "get down, get down" were met with cheers from dozens of locals. Police then turned on the onlookers: "Get back in your homes."

Police chased suspect cars around the suburb.

Some motorists were ignoring the road blocks, driving around the obstacles and, in one case, careering into a tree.

Police pulled over a white van in Woolooware, immediately west of Cronulla, containing six youths. With guns drawn, they forced them to the ground on the median strip.

"The police chased the car up and down the road," witness Graham Moss said. "They got out, pointed their guns at them and told them to get down."

As a uneasy peace was restored to the suburbs late last night, locals who rioted on Sunday gathered in groups of 10 or a dozen, surveying the damage.

Brace yourself, it'll be eye for an eye
Richard Kerbaj
December 13, 2005

ONE of the victims of the Cronulla race violence warned retaliatory attacks were inevitable but revealed an "Aussie" helped rescue him as he was being punched and kicked by a rabid mob.

Bruised and battered, 18-year-old Australian-born Issa relived his horror yesterday, telling of walking unwittingly into a rampaging mob in Sydney's southern beachside suburb on Sunday.

The teenager - who said he had no idea of what was to come when he turned up at the beach with two mates - realised he was in trouble and trapped too far from his car when the crowd started yelling "f..k the Lebs; we're going to f..k them up".

"We were just going down for a swim," the Sydneysider told The Australian yesterday. "If I knew there was going to be trouble, I wouldn't have gone."

Issa was whacked from behind and the subsequent punches and kicks came hard and fast.

He threw a few punches back in defence, but he and his mates were outnumbered and overpowered. In the end, they were forced to the ground and held their faces in their hands.

"We had to fight, we couldn't do anything else," said Issa, who did not want his last name published.

"I gave a couple of punches ... but at the end, I couldn't handle it. I just dropped and they just kept kicking into me and punching me (and) throwing beer bottles (at me)."

Issa said although the crowd attacked anyone who looked "Middle Eastern or Arab", one "Aussie" tried helping him to his feet when he was being beaten.

"There was an Aussie when I was getting bashed; he jumped on top of me and he helped me, protected me," he said. "You know, there's good and bad in every nationality."

Issa's horrified aunt Sahar watched the attack on television. "I saw him on the news getting beaten up," she told The Australian.

Police eventually came to Issa's rescue and guided him to a police car and a nearby hospital.

Issa said the experience had made him feel more alienated than he had once felt as a Muslim youth. He said that in the future he would go to the beach only with a large group of friends, in case a similar scenario unfolded.

"After what happened, of course you're going to get scared to go to the beach," he said. "What if they all start turning against us at every beach?"

Asked if young members of the Lebanese community would retaliate this coming weekend, he said: "Yeah, there's more retaliation to come.

"Not by me, I'm not a troublemaking type, but from what I've seen yesterday, you don't know what's happening next."

We're not a bunch of racists, PM says
John Kerin, Nick Leys
December 13, 2005

JOHN Howard condemned Sydney's race riots as "sickening" and rejected claims they exposed a racist underbelly as community leaders searched for reasons for the violence.

As he prepared to fly to Malaysia for today's inaugural East Asia Summit, where the riots are front-page news, the Prime Minister was also forced to deny his stand on homegrown terrorists was partly to blame.

"I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag of racism on the Australian community," Mr Howard said.

"I think it's a term that's flung around carelessly and I'm simply not going to do it."

But the blame was being levelled at politicians and Sydney's outspoken talkback radio hosts who have consistently been critical of Muslim youths.

Dr Mark Lopez, author of The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics, said locals in the Sutherland Shire, in Sydney's south, had taken "a lot of ****" from Muslim youths.

"I personally think it is possible that the weekend's events represent the early signs of a significant historical shift," Dr Lopez said.

"The multicultural fabric has never been challenged by the context of a war before. It's

going to put multiculturalism under strain.

"The Lebanese gangs and the Aussie hooligans draped in flags are two sections of the community that haven't been touched by the ideology of multiculturalism."

After a meeting with NSW Premier Morris Iemma yesterday, executive director of the Arab Council Australia, Randa Kattan, said tension between the locals and outsiders had been magnified by the rhetoric.

"It is illegal to incite racial hatred," she said. "Why is it that shock jocks inciting racial hatred aren't prosecuted for breaking the laws?"

Greens senator Bob Brown said Mr Howard's initial failure to confront former federal MP Pauline Hanson and his mismanagement of immigration issues had "mired the issue of racism in Australia".

"Mr Howard is very slow to call a racist spade a racist spade ... he has taken Australia backwards from the last half-century which celebrated multiculturalism in our nation," Senator Brown said.

Chris Mogan, the Melbourne Clinic's head of psychology, said global terrorism fears had exacerbated the usual tribal tensions.

"We are moving towards change and it's a bit frightening," Mr Mogan said. "There's a climate of uncertainty and when Australians feel uncertain they get anxious and when some people get anxious they get frightened and others get aggressive."

Nearly three of every four Lebanese who have settled in Australia have chosen to live in Sydney.

Lawyer Wahid Ali, of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said Sydney had developed into subcultures.

"People tend not to mix with people in other communities," Mr Ali said.

Federal Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird, whose electorate of Cook takes in Cronulla, believed the rampage had been building for at least six years.

"Cronulla is the recreation area for Sydney's southwest and we have always had a lot of Lebanese and other western suburbs residents coming in on weekends to what is predominantly an Anglo area," Mr Baird said. "Since September 11 and the Bali bombings -- where a lot of people from down our way were killed -- and those high-profile rape cases, the tensions have been worse. The flashpoint for Sunday morning's riot was alongside the memorial on the beach to the local victims of the Bali bombing."

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, who is of Lebanese descent, said he would do everything he could to ensure the riots were not replicated in his state.

"I don't think it matters what your background is," Mr Bracks said. "To see those sort of events is not what we understand Australia is all about."

Additional reporting: D.D. McNicoll, Rick Wallace, Elisabeth Wynhause

Far-right groups admit to role
David King
December 13, 2005

EXTREMIST groups accused of links to neo-Nazis have admitted mobilising more than 100 people to attend the riots in Cronulla.

Jim Saleam, the NSW secretary of ultra-nationalist group Australia First, said his members had recruited up to 120 people for the rally but denied they were involved in violence.

"We do have some local supporters and these guys mobilised their family friends, mates, work-mates, associates, every Jack and Harry, to come," Dr Saleam said.

NSW Police Minister Carl Scully confirmed that extremists had taken part in the riots.

"There appears to be an element of white supremacists and they really have no place in mainstream Australian society," Mr Scully said.

"Those sort of characters belong in 1930s Berlin."

Skinheads wearing boots, braces and neo-Nazi emblems were among the mob of 5000.

Three far-right organisations -- Australia First, The Patriotic Youth League and the Newcastle-based Blood and Honour -- handed out racist pamphlets.

All three are considered to have neo-Nazi links.

Australia First and the PYL deny any association.

Australia First had links to the failed political party One Nation, led by Queensland's Pauline Hanson.

Australia First founder Graeme Campbell sought in 2003 to gain control of the West Australian arm of One Nation.

The founder of the Patriotic Youth League, Stuart McBeth, is a former One Nation activist.

Anti-race hate campaigner Matt Henderson-Hau, who runs the Fightdemback.org website, said he had information that only one of the skinheads at the rally came from within the Sutherland Shire.

"The rest came from the Central Coast, Newcastle and other parts of Sydney," he said.

Dr Saleam, who was jailed for 3 1/2 years in 1991 for possessing a firearm and organising a shotgun attack on the home of the African National Congress's Australian representative, Eddie Funde, refused to condemn the racial violence.

"Rather than say that one supports what people did, all I'd say to you is: I wouldn't condone it, but I wouldn't condemn it," Dr Saleam said.

Police videos would show that none of the "two-dozen or so" members of his group who attended had been violent, he said.

Patriotic Youth League spokesman Luke Connors confirmed that his group attended the riot and had handed out anti-migration literature.

"There was only a few people there, mostly girls with their boyfriends, handing out a few leaflets with 'Aussies fighting back' on them," he said.

"It wasn't a full-on operation, we didn't plan a full-on operation. Australia First did, not us."

Mr Henderson-Hau said neo-Nazis had manipulated the crowd at Cronulla.

"If you remove the Nazis from the equation, you will go a long way to dousing the flames and hopefully some cool heads will emerge on both sides," said Mr Henderson-Hau.

Dr Saleam has a PhD from the University of Sydney. The title of his thesis was The Other Radicalism: An Inquiry Into Contemporary Australian Extreme Right Ideology, Politics and Organisation 1975-1995.

[Footie Mad]

Why do you want a baseball bat Pekka?? Only thing it does is increase the risk of someone dieing, ok you can be seriously beaten but with a baseball bat it might take one hit and the power smashes your head and it's bye bye. Not many people can do that with fists or a kick. Maybe one in twenty of the people fighting actually want to kill their opponent, or maybe they want to but they don't want to have it on their conscience. If you're scared of hurting your knuckles or spraining an ankle or whatever you then you're not really serious anyway.

[Pekka]

If you're scared of bats, you're not serious anyway .

Nah, I think some weaponry is OK. If it is agreed upon. Bats are OK.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Pekka
If you're scared of bats, you're not serious anyway .

Nah, I think some weaponry is OK. If it is agreed upon. Bats are OK.

People come asking for trouble unarmed - not so worrying.

People come asking for trouble with baseball bats and such - I'll be hunting for a gun.

[Pekka]

True... there's always someone not complying to the rules.. bringing something more to give the edge..

I guess it should be no weapons at all, or with weapons. This way, everyone has weapons in their cars and hidden in their clothes, but maybe they will be only used at the very end.

[DanS]

To be honest with you, I'm a little surprised at the lack of lethality in a riot of this size. Quaint.

There are two neighborhoods in DC (Barry Farms-Cordon Terrace) that routinely have an annual death toll of a half dozen high schoolers from a territorial dispute. Nobody even remembers how it started.

[MOBIUS]

Judging by some of the posts on this forum, I'm not surprised these riots take place - Pekka wants to join in on the action and Az lets his true racist prejudices slip...

Me, I think I'll dust off my copy of Romper Stomper...