Too bad IT didn't end with punk getting burned!
Posted on 08/22/2006 4:51:50 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
A TEENAGER who burnt an Australian flag taken from an RSL club during Sydney's racial unrest will come face to face with club members as part of his punishment.
The 17-year-old pleaded guilty to removing the flag from the Brighton-Le-Sands RSL club and burning it in a reprisal attack following the Cronulla riot on December 11 last year.
In Bidura Children's Court today, the teenager from Hurstville, who cannot be named, was ordered into youth conferencing with the club.
He is expected to meet with diggers to discuss how the crime affected them and what the flag means to war veterans.
Brighton-Le-Sands RSL president Barry Worling welcomed the punishment and said he would accept an apology from the boy.
"I would be quite happy to accept his apology," Mr Worling said to Macquarie Radio.
"He would certainly learn the significance of it (burning the flag) by coming up and apologising.
"As a punishment I think it's good. I think it would be humiliating for the lad."
More than 5,000 people were involved in a race riot at North Cronulla beach, during which people of Middle Eastern appearance were chased and attacked.
As retaliatory violence spread through other Sydney suburbs that afternoon, the youth climbed a pole and took an Australian flag from the RSL club.
The flag was sprayed with accelerant and set alight amid a crowd of about 150 people.
The teenager and another man, Hadi Khawaja, were charged with burning the Australian flag.
Khawaja, 24, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three months' jail in January.
In court today, Magistrate Joan Baptie sentenced the teenager to 12 month's probation for entering the Brighton-Le-Sands club grounds with intent.
Two additional charges of demanding property with menaces and detaining a person in company were withdrawn and dismissed.
Actually, the veterans seemed to be very polite in their response. What is an RSL, though?
Returned Services League. An organization for and by veterans. RSL clubs are dotted all over Australia.
His punishment needs to be that he takes care of veterans graves. oh for about a year.maybe he will learn something... doubt it.
The teenager from Hurstville would become the teenager from Hurtsville.
Kum-bah-yah my lord, kum-bay-yah, kum-bah-yah...
come on now. Let's all join hands.....
AS he bloody-well should!
Too bad IT didn't end with punk getting burned!
They figure a good takling-to is gonna straighten him out? He'll leave and laugh to himself at snookering them.
Returned Services League
sort of like our VFW!
Stone the punk in the public square.
Kumbayah, indeed. I just cannot picture an insolent MUSLIM teenager, who enjoyed doing this and hates the West, 'hearing the pain' of those affected and changing his ways. But if it works, maybe we could have a Kumbayah meeting over in Lebanon with the Hezzies.
Thumb screws would be more my choice.
He told his students to go home and tell their parents.
They did.
He isn't teaching kid right now, and the fire dept. is after him too.
I advocate that it should be taken as an application for the sale of your citizenship on eBay. To qualified bidders only, of course.
You publicly burn the US flag, you should have to appear in court to disown that intention, or it should be imposed - and you should take the proceeds and find somewhere else to live. Action should also lie against TV broadcasters who intentionally broadcast a flag-burning demonstation - they should have to cover the resulting court case and should have to report the result of the auctioning of the citizenship, if it comes to that. And the coverage of the court case and the auction should be as extensive as the coverage of the original "speech."
Citizenship is a "right" ony for those born in the USA. For naturalized citizens it is a "privilege". In either case, it can be taken away after due process of law, with due process of a "privilege" much shorter than that of a "right".
We should take it away more often.
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