Race riots in Sydney

[Lung]

Apolyton logs me out after a few minutes, and then denies me re-logging in, so here's the first of a few posts. Apparently typing a reply doesn't count as activity

Firstly, let me say how sad i am about what is happening, and worse, what is to come. Unlike Finbar, i largely blame the state government who should have seen this coming, and typically responded with a cynical "political damage-control" approach, which has clearly failed. Fortunately however, the police started acting proactively and doing their jobs after initially being sent en masse to Cronulla to try and control the locals while the Lebanese gangs went elsewhere where they could run riot with impunity. The second night they got tougher and dispersed gang cars and groups of people.

[Lung]

I am amazed at how many bad reasons are thrown about this forum as to the cause of the riots

Saying this is all about racism is just a simplistic cheap shot at the locals. This happened specifically because of a spate of gang attacks on innocent people on Cronulla beach. It was no secret that they were Lebanese gangs perpetrating the attacks, nor was it merely a false rumour.

To say that the riots were motivated by race is to say that if the attacks were carried out by other white Aussies, then there wouldn't have been retaliation. If a group of Aussies from another beach did thew attacks, there would still have been retaliation. The fact that they beat up innocent lifeguards, volunteer lifeguards, and then claimed to own the beach for themselves, made Lebanese gangs the target of the hatred. Unfortunately, the idiots involved in the riot attacked anyone but the Lebanese gangs.

[Lung]

However, i'm not only angry at the Lebanese gangs who have absolutely no respect for any other Australians and its institutions, but at the Cronulla locals who obviously didn't think through their actions and its inevitable ramifications.

What do you get out of attacking amulances? Or police? Or lone individuals of "middle-eastern appearance"? If they are on their own, they are obviously not in a gang. What were they thinking??

It doesn't take Einstein to know that if you form an angry mob that you attract radicals who are only interested in their own foul agendas. Notice the photos of angry Aussies being held back by other Aussies who were smiling? If you form a mob, you can't control it, so all they achieved was to make themselves look like the perpetrators instead of the victims and escalate the violence with a group that has countless guns and is willing to use them.

[Lung]

It was no surprise to see white supremacist groups come out of their holes to commit violence. However it should be noted that these groups only have members of hundreds, if that, yet they still managed to set back race relations back twenty years (i hadn't heard the term 'wog' bandied about with such abandon for about that long), not that they give a rats arse about that.

I think the NSW government hasn't a clue how to control this, and the sooner they let the police make policing decisions, the sooner this will be under control. The first thing the Premier, Morris Iemma should do is to stop appearing in press conferences with the Police Commissioner. I guarantee that Ken Moroney is a better policeman than Morris Iemma!

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Agathon


The Australian police are paragons of virtue. Esp the NSW police.

They care so much about racial sensitivity that they dress up in black face and hire strippers in order to see what it is like being a member of a racial minority.

And what was that guys name... Rogerson?

I think the view has always been in Sydney, contrary to what the chattering classes say, that organised crime is better than disorganised, which leads to street violence and upsets the citizenry.

The closest equivalent to the Sydney Police would be the LAPD. The equivalent incident would be gangs of youths from Watts showing up on LA's snootier beaches and trying to take over. You can just imagine the death toll.

[Lung]

One of the causes of the riots is the continuing softly-softly approach by the police (under the poor direction of the state govt) towards the gangs. A few months ago on TV was shown a Lebanese gang hurling abuse at a pair of policemen in a police car, who responded by driving away - a great way to instill respect in the gang members

How much of an excuse should a policeman need to arrest gang members who are an obvious danger to anyone who gets near them? They are worried about the gang members using their mobile phones to call their mates to help attack the police, but they should arrest them and confiscate their phones as it is illegal to incite violence!

The old saying that police not only need to enforce the law but also be seen to enforce the law should be heeded. Also the one about justice must be seen to be equal to all should be followed. The Cronulla folk see the police as being tough on them and soft on the Lebanese gangs. This problem won't go away until they rectify this, you can bet your arse.

Mark my words, there is a great deal more angry people than the large mob we saw at Cronulla on Sunday

[Alexander's Horse]

This is fundamentally about gangs not race. Those beaches have been a melting pot for as long I remember. Everybody is welcome. When I go home we always go to the areas where the migrant families have their picnics under the trees. Never had a problem.

[Lung]

I totally agree with you, AH

Claims of it being of a purely racist or religious nature are ignorant of the facts of the circumstances, namely gangs trying to take control of a place considered owned but shared by locals.

[CrONoS]

I do not live in Australia.

Maybe fundamentally the problem was about the gangs. But now, the problem are racial, some peole specifically choose race and beat'em up.(even if they are greeks, turks, or amerindians). People are "fueled" now by anger and they oriented their violence over other race.

What is bad, but really bad with this. You destroyed the existing bridge between these two community.

But, like I said before, I do not live in Australia. What I know, is what I see in the news.

See ya,

P.s.: It`s pretty sad...

[Lung]

Here's an article highlighting the disturbing politicisation of the NSW police and its inevitable failure to prevent or even deal with such a fundamental policing issue.

Blame race riots on police force neglect

Tim Priest: Blame race riots on police force neglect

December 13, 2005
THE headlines in Sydney's main newspapers in the wake of Sunday's riots had similar themes: "Our disgrace", "Day of shame" and so on. And indeed, to any even-minded citizen, Sunday was certainly not one of the Harbour City's better days. Let's not mince words: the behaviour of the rioters at Cronulla beach, as political, police and community leaders have insisted, was disgusting and disgraceful.

But the events that unfolded in the Sutherland Shire reminded me of the lyrics from the song Gravity by British band Embrace a few years ago: "It's been a long time coming ... and I can't stop now."

That song encapsulated the mood and the agenda of everyone who gathered at the beachside suburb. This was to be a day of protest unlike anything we have witnessed in Sydney before.

I ventured down to Cronulla and watched the scenes unfold from about 11am. I watched as groups of young men walked to the beach carrying cartons of beer and drinking freely as small groups of police walked around. They obviously had no instructions from senior police to curtail and deter the always volatile mixture of alcohol and public gatherings.

That was the first big error and probably the most telling. The second mistake was the inability of senior police in command to read the crowd and to anticipate its mood. Sure, I saw any number of earnest-looking police commanders earlier in the day, all armed with the obligatory mobile phone and clipboard. Later I saw them safely ensconced in the command post located above the surf club.

It reminded me of the old British army model, of the generals gathered on horseback on hills many kilometres from the battle, watching the front-line troops fight but removed from the emotional and physical atmosphere that often gave the telltale signs that disaster lurked nearby.

As with the Redfern and Macquarie Fields riots in February last year and February this year respectively, police at Cronulla quickly lost the initiative and the battle. From the start, the police were hopelessly outnumbered. Indeed, police numbers were more likely dictated by the bean-counting bureaucrats under Police Minister Carl "Sparkles" Scully.

Although not widely known, the police ministry wields awesome power throughout the NSW police. So much so that most of the big decisions are made by so-called experts within the ministry and usually based on cost.

If Sunday's debacle can be linked back to the police ministry in any way, then there should be hell to pay. Despite the attempts of the experts, past and present, policing and law and order can't be run on a budget. After all, public safety is not a franchise; it is a common-law right.

The final mistake was the failure to predict the inevitable retaliation of hot-headed youths of Middle Eastern descent to the events at Cronulla. Subsequently, police failed to contain the violence unleashed along southern and eastern Sydney on Sunday night. Again, despite the rhetoric, senior police have learned little from previous debacles involving public disorder. Indeed, there is a case for believing that they probably never will.

The only police-recorded incident of an assault on Cronulla beach this year, according to area police commander Bob Redfern, was the previous weekend's attack on the surf lifesavers. Just one. Call it naivety or just benign neglect, but his statement last week merely brought back memories of the Cabramatta debacle of 1999-2000 when senior police told the NSW parliament that gang warfare in Sydney wasn't a problem. Clearly, a single recorded assault (the thuggish attack on the lifesavers) did not compel thousands of local youths to descend on Cronulla beaches in protest and behave the way they did.

If the police and the state Government are to learn anything from Sunday's riots, it is this: people largely do not believe what comes out of the mouths of senior police and government ministers.

Of course, the usual claque of agenda-driven ethnic community leaders were quick to condemn the Cronulla incidents as un-Australian and racist. Never mind the multitude of racist attacks on young Australian men and women during the past decade, which have now manifested into full-blown racial retaliation.

In an article on this page nearly two years ago ("Don't turn a blind eye to terror in our midst," January 12, 2004), I argued that the increasing frequency of racially motivated attacks on young Australian men and women - including murders, gang rapes and serious assaults by young men of Lebanese Muslim descent - would rise dramatically throughout Australia. These problems remain widespread and have been documented in the ensuing two years.

Yet the NSW Labor Government and police have failed to address the issues in any way apart from the instigation of something called Strike Force Gain, set up to investigate a spate of shootings involving young men of Middle Eastern descent in southwest Sydney last year. This strike force has been largely wound down due to budgetary restraints.

The crime problems evident in southwest and southeast Sydney resemble a medical condition like skin cancer: they are relatively painless and easy to cure in the early stages, but if left untreated they require painful and radical surgery to cure.

Sunday's events are the start of what could become a long, drawn-out war of racial and social division that may be harder to cure than any of us can imagine. If we addressed the problem a decade ago when it first appeared, we may never have seen what we witnessed on Sunday.

Alas, such acts of violence will roll on intermittently for a great deal of time and in a manner few of us could have imagined in our lifetime.

For a future glimpse of Sydney, look back at recent events in Paris. No amount of mealy-mouthed rhetoric from the Government or tough talk from inexperienced police commanders is going to make the slightest bit of difference.

This is a reality, not a prediction. Tim Priest, a former Sydney police detective, is author of To Protect and To Serve (New Holland, 2003).

[Lung]

Originally posted by Agathon
Didn't know you were from Cronulla way AH, how are the Sharks doing these days?

They said they were going to win this year, but they have kept their premiership virginity intact

[FrostyBoy]

Still stuck in the primitive age..

This is why I find Jesus to be so profound. Even 2000 years ago, he knew that we as humans are almost useless in being good, understanding and respecting people.

He said if someone strikes you on one cheek, ask him to strike the other aswell. To primitive, angry people, this sentence makes no sense, it sounds foolish. "LET HIM beat ME up!?".

But reality is surprsingly different; if someone is going to beat you up, let him, but not in a "Try me!" way.
While it sucks at the time; they will soon realise their own stupidness and withdraw.

Ghandi realised this too. (Which I believe he learned from the bible).

[Dracon II]

I mean, what idiot in their right mind sends a bunch of thieves and murderers to populate a colony and then has the addtional wisdom to provide them convicted whores to breed off?

Right... and I suppose you blamed the Paris riots on continental philosophy?

I'm sick of people writing Australians off as nothing but the spawn of criminals. The kind of comments that people make about our supposed inheritance of a criminal past reeks of eugenics and just plain ignorance about Australian history... the two most significant demographic events in Australian history were not shipments of convicts but the immigration of free settlers and refugees - in the 1850s due to the the Gold rush, and in the 1950s due to the aftermath of WW2. Australia's population doubled between 1851 and 1860, for example... and it wasn't due to a crime wave. My family, for example, is from South Australia, which was a colony of free settlers. I'm descended from Prussian gentry who escaping religious persecution. And mewonders how many of your so-called "thieves and murderers" and "convicted whores" were actually stealing food to feed their family? Yeah, that's right... so called "Marxist" Agathon conveniently forgets the role of poverty as a causal factor of crime just so he can take a cheap shot at Australians. Apparently the downtrodden masses he supposedly sympathizes with are all "murderers" and "whores"....
Sorry to get angry over what is most certainly a simple Kiwi joke at their perennial rival's expense... but this really isn't the time. It just seems you were all too hasty in tarring every Australian with the same brush. I do not believe that Australia is unique in having such problems with gang, youth and ethnic antagonism... and we are certainly not the only country with idiot rednecks partial to alcohol fueled violence. Australia is, in fact, one of the most peaceful and law abiding countries in the world. A problem with racism, yes... but again, this is not exceptional. I hardly think our original status as a penal colony has anything to do with these problems.

[Alexander's Horse]

Dracon, chill out, the convict thing is so lame. I say so what if in the early days the New South Wales government paid its soldiers in rum?

[Pekka]

mobius, and where was the hypocricy? Please, do point it out.