Racial tensions explode again (Australia)

Herald Sun ^ | 13 December 2005 | Ellen Whinnett, Luke McIlveen and Gemma Jones

[Aussie Dasher]

SIMMERING racial tensions exploded in Sydney again last night as police traced chilling new text messages inciting further violence.

Groups of Middle-Eastern men descended on Cronulla seeking revenge for Sunday's attacks, smashing cars with baseball bats.

There were reports of shots being fired and of police being driven at as running battles were fought.

The area had been peaceful early, but by 6pm many Australian flags were hanging in windows and on cars.

About 10.30pm, six carloads of young men of Middle Eastern appearance drove through the beachside strip.

They began kicking parked vehicles and hurling bottles and screaming for "Aussies" to stay inside.

This began a string of running skirmishes with police in which about 16 were arrested.

The confrontations then moved to Kings Way where a man was bashed and glass broken.

Police dogs and helicopters were called as furious locals began to gather, threatening to take back the streets from "wogs and Lebanese".

Rebecca Francis, 21, said the young men had intimidated her and her boyfriend. "They said to us, `Get inside, you Aussie c---s, if you don't want to get hurt."'

Police yelled at local residents to stay inside.

Police were yesterday investigating SMS messages calling on young Arabs to start another round of attacks at Cronulla Beach next Sunday.

"All Arabs unite as one, we will never back down to anyone the aussie's (sic) will feel the full force of the arabs as one `brothers in arms'," the SMS said.

"Unite now lets (sic) show them who's boss `destroy' everything gather at cronulla . . . spread the message to all Arabs."

At Lakemba last night, more than 400 Middle Eastern men, many with bats, bricks and iron bars, gathered at the mosque. Police tried for two hours to disperse them.

Later, as the crowd began leaving, a brick was thrown and flares were fired at people, police said.

In Maroubra, about 60 locals gathered near a hotel despite earlier peace talks between local surf group the Bra Boys and Lebanese community leaders. Police had reports that bricks were stockpiled on nearby shops' roofs and some metal bars were confiscated.

But the crowd had largely dispersed by nightfall.

The worsening violence was sparked on Sunday when a 5000-strong alcohol-fuelled mob, some waving flags and chanting racist slogans, chased and beat people of Middle Eastern appearance at Cronulla beach.

Later in the night, a wave of violence spread to Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands, with two people stabbed and more than 100 cars badly damaged in apparent revenge attacks.

At least 30 people have been injured, including two ambulance officers and six police officers.

NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney condemned the violence as the worst he had seen in 40 years as a policeman.

"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," Mr Moroney said.In other developments:

A POLICE strike force was set up to hunt down those responsible.

A TOTAL of 16 people had been charged with 42 offences as of last night.

WHITE supremacists were blamed for inciting the riot.

PRIME Minister John Howard said the violence was sickening, but he did not believe Australia was a racist nation.

Police were checking hospitals for a man with possible burns to his legs after a flag was torn from an RSL club and burned.

A witness said the man spat, stomped and urinated on the flag before dousing it with lighter fluid and setting it on fire.Two police officers said they saved two young men from being murdered on Sunday afternoon.

Sgt Craig Campbell said he had no doubt two young men cowering in a train at Cronulla railway station would have been killed if he had not held off the mob with his baton.

Sen-Constable Gary Smith said another two Middle Eastern youths thanked him for saving their lives. "The crowd surrounded one. I felt he was in grave danger," he said.

"Once I got him in the police car he thanked me for saving his life."

An attack on two Cronulla lifeguards last week, blamed on Lebanese youths, sparked the chaos.

Cronulla locals yesterday criticised a "softly-softly" approach by police.

Two bottle shops were asked to close about 5pm on Sunday after the violence had already peaked. Youths wandered drunk with bottles of beer in alcohol-free zones with no police action.

A full-time police riot squad will be operational in January, but critics say it will be too late.

[Alouette]

Australia will be a Muslim state within 25 years.

I'd say there will be no Muslims in Australia within 25 years.

[sergeantdave]

Looks like the Australian propaganda press is slipping a bit. They forgot to work in the word "Nazis" when referring to the white "racists."

[Rastus]

At Lakemba last night, more than 400 Middle Eastern men, many with bats, bricks and iron bars, gathered at the mosque. Police tried for two hours to disperse them.

I'm thinking daisy cutter.

[Aussiebabe]

Muslims shouldn't get much of a run in this, since 90% of the Lebanese are Christians--this is mainly ethnic situation. Peter Ruehl in the today's Financial Review does the best job of anybody explaining on what is going on.

[Aussie Dasher]

Lebanese CHRISTIANS don't usually gather at a MOSQUE!

[showme_the_Glory]

Just kickin muslim asses and drinkin beer...Up against the aussie mother....reminds me of a song.

[ADemocratNoMore]

> Everyone should read this:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=581


Just did. WOW!. Thanks for the heads up. My prayers go out to the good people of Australia, it seams that they are up against much the same Fifth Columnist PC Socialists, in league with the Islamofaschists that threaten all of civilized society.

[El Gato]

About 10.30pm, six carloads of young men of Middle Eastern appearance drove through the beachside strip.

Good think for them the Aussie government conveniently took away all the Ugly Black Guns, and some not so ugly semi-autos as well a few years ago.

I don't recommend the Palies, or any other middle eastern bunch, try this sort of thing down around South Padre or Galveston, but I sort of wish they would too.

[The Duke]

why does Assoc. Press & Reuters always refer to Muslim RIOTERS as "youths"

Hey, 30 years ago they were always referred to as "students". The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[The Duke]

BTW, isn't "diversity" wonderful?

[blam]

Mobs riot again as Sydney race tensions explode

By Nick Squires in Darwin
The Telegraph (UK)
(Filed: 13/12/2005)

Racial violence flared in Sydney yesterday in apparent retaliation for earlier clashes in which a mob of 5,000 white youths chanted abuse and attacked people of Middle Eastern origin.

The second night of violence brought terror to one of the city's best known beaches. It flared when young men of mostly Lebanese background clashed with police, throwing stones and other missiles.

Police question men they suspect of being involved with the violence

Witnesses reported several gun shots and one woman was said to have been stabbed.

Police reinforcements were drafted in as thugs attacked cars and shops with baseball bats and threatened to do battle with rival white gangs with guns and crowbars.

About 200 young Muslim men gathered outside one of the city's largest mosques, some armed with pistols.

A white woman in a car was said to have been approached by some men and told: "We are going to rape you, you Aussie slut." It was claimed that a shot was fired at the vehicle.

The cycle of violence tarnished Australia's reputation - often promoted by the government - as a bastion of tolerance and racial integration.

Anti-Muslim feeling has been exacerbated by the Bali bombings, a series of gang rapes of white women by men of Pakistani and Lebanese background and last month's counter-terrorism raids on alleged Islamic militants in Melbourne and Sydney. White youths also accuse Lebanese-Australian men of looking for trouble in beach areas, intimidating women in bikinis and picking fights.

The violence was concentrated on Cronulla, a southern suburb where rioting on Sunday led to more than 30 injuries and 16 arrests.

Cronulla, a staunchly Anglo-Celtic area, attracts thousands of trippers from the less salubrious western suburbs, a stronghold of the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities, which number 300,000 out of the national population of 20 million.

It has a reputation for resenting non-Anglo visitors. On Sunday thousands of white youths congregated on the beach front to protest against an incident last week in which two lifeguards - the epitome of white Australian culture - were beaten up by men of Lebanese origin. The lifeguards were attacked after asking a group to stop playing football because it was disturbing others.

Although peaceful at first, the demonstration was tinged with racism from the start - one man set up a barbecue offering "Free snags [sausages], no tabouli". Another had scrawled on his chest "Mohammed was a camel-raping faggot".

The crowd chanted "No more Lebs [Lebanese]" and sang Waltzing Matilda.

The atmosphere soon turned ugly, with police using pepper spray and batons to subdue rioters who pelted officers with bottles and smashed up patrol cars.

A Muslim woman had her head scarf torn off in what police described as a "cowardly" and "un-Australian" act.

White supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were among the crowd. "They have no place in mainstream Australian society," the New South Wales police minister, Carl Scully, said. "Those characters are best placed in 1930s Berlin, not in Cronulla in 2005."

John Howard, the prime minister, said: "Attacking people because of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity is totally unacceptable." He added that he did "not accept that there is underlying racism in this country".

Kuranda Seyit, of the Forum on Australian-Islamic Relations, disagreed. "There is racism running deeply in the Australian psyche. It's been simmering for years."

[MrUK-OK]

I'm based in the UK and I've never been to Australia, but England is saturated with Australians who are passing through or have actually settled for the duration. I've got to know a lot of these people from 'down under' and in general I love their attitude to life etc. Maybe I've been living in a bubble or something, but I've never found any of my Antipitean friends to be racist (a generalisation, true).

To get to the point, I am saddened to hear the Muslim troubles have sparked-off there too. Isn't it becoming more and more obvious that these people just do not fit in with Western society? And I find it annoying that they demand changes to suit them, rather than assimulating to the new countries. This will all probably end with cash being pumped into their communities by vote-catching politically correct goody-goodies. I have lived in Asian communities, white communities and Afro-Caribean communities, and it is only by living there that you realise it is not just the colour of one's skin. People should be proud of their origins and keep-up their traditions, but should not dictate their values on others in the process - again, assimulation.

The BBC in England only report a fraction of what is actually happening, and one has to go to other sources for the whole truth. The BBC don't seem to have reported on how the Muslims had grown in numbers in the troubled area (once a decent neighbourhood) and were causing all sorts of trouble - street robbery, sexual abuse, other violent acts, and racism. I get the feeling the attack on the lifeguards was the last straw - too right.

Picture this - you go to the beach with your girlfriend to sunbathe and she gets hassled from a load of leering Arabs, who don't just look but feel too. Or you're having a lovelly family day on the beach and a gang of Muslims steam the beach (mass robbery - loads of them all at once mugging people). Ten points to the Australians for loosing their tollerance.

But the latest news reports only seem to be focusing on the 'drunkan white racists'. Why do they push this idea that white people are the only racists in the world? My experiences in the above mentioned communities has shown me this is not the case. And why is it that when 'whites' retaliate, they are of some kind of mental imparement?

In the UK it seems we are far too tolerant for our own good. I think the Australian guys have been an example to us all.

[alarm rider]

ISLAM IS NOT A RACE.

[MrUK-OK]

Excellent link! Thanks for that. Real opinions from real people!

[Dave Elias]

"The crowd chanted "No more Lebs [Lebanese]" and sang Waltzing Matilda." - A song about the exploits of a livestock thief, the irony of choosing this ditty obviously lost on the vigilante group.

[sit-rep]

bttt!!

[Dave Elias]

"Looks like the Australian propaganda press is slipping a bit. They forgot to work in the word "Nazis" when referring to the white "racists.""

Propaganda? The Herald Sun is owned by News Limited which is run by that reknowned pinko-socialist Rupert Murdoch!

[Oztrich Boy]

"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," Mr Moroney said.In other developments:

Sweet naïf Police Commissioner Ken Moroney. He's never heard of "being f---ed Leb style"

[Oztrich Boy]

Waltzing Matilda." - A song about the exploits of a livestock thief, the irony of choosing this ditty obviously lost on the vigilante group

Oh my gosh! You're right. I never realized that before. How could we have been so blind?

Maybe because we are uncivilized barbarians, descended from comvicts.

Actually Australians are born ironic