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SYDNEY (AFP) - Hundreds of police will patrol Sydney's beaches for most of Australia's summer in a "fight for order and control" after some of the worst racial violence here in decades, state premier Morris Iemma said. The head of New South Wales state said that the heavy police presence, which was ramped up this weekend to include 2,000 patrolling officers, would last as long as necessary. "This is a fight for order and control of our streets," Iemma told ABC radio. "There are hooligans out there who believe they have the right to determine who goes to beaches and...

THE mother of a Melbourne youth allegedly found on a Sydney bus with two bottles of petrol said she was worried he "likes Islam too much". Amir Ali Osmanagic's distraught mother said yesterday she feared he would get mixed up with trouble-makers when he moved to Sydney three weeks ago. "He's a very good person, but he like too much Islam," Envera Osmanagic said. "He likes Islam, maybe he protects Islam, something like that. "He's young, he does not know what is happening." Amir Ali Osmanagic, 18, and Parham Esmailpour, 19, of Sydney, gave police different excuses for carrying the...

What's the deal with these riots in Sydney? You switch on the television and there's scenes of urban conflagration and you think, "Hang on, I saw this story last month." But no. They were French riots. These are Australian riots. Entirely different. The French riots were perpetrated by - what's the word? - "youths". The Australian riots were perpetrated by "white youths". Same age cohort, but adjectivally enhanced. And, being "white youths", they thus offered "a chilling glimpse into the darker corners of Australian society", as Nick Squires put it last week, "with thousands of white youths rampaging through a...

RETURN to your beaches, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma urged residents of southern Sydney and other NSW cities today. After asking people in NSW to stay away from some of the state's best known beaches at the weekend in case of violence, Mr Iemma today declared beaches safe and called on beachgoers to return to the sand. Mr Iemma said today police now believed the threat of unrest at beaches in southern Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle had passed. "The intelligence and the security assessments are such that people are encouraged to return to normal business," he told reporters. "This...

Tell gangs you're an Aussie: Iemma By Jonathan Porter 15-12-2005 From: The Australian   NSW Premier Morris Iemma has called on people not to renounce their Australian identity in the face of intimidation by Lebanese gangs - even if it means being bashed. His advice came after victims of rioting in Sydney told how they were asked if they were Australian before being attacked by large groups of Middle Eastern men. Mr Iemma said that if approached, people should say: "I'm Australian and this is Australia and this is a country that is here to be shared by all. "(We...

We have a problem with law and order, not race hate AMONG the 200 or so nations of the world, Australia is among the most diverse, tolerant, egalitarian and prosperous. To say, as some suggest, that we are unable to accommodate immigrants ignores the reality that about 20 per cent of us come from families where English is not the native language and who have been here for only one or two generations. And as for being insular, last year about 25 per cent of the population were born overseas, the highest proportion for a century. Australia is not a...

IF there is one positive thing to come out of the violence in Cronulla, it will be a long hard look at how schoolchildren are educated about Australian culture and what they are taught about their responsibilities as members of a civil society. Judged by the age of many of those involved in abusing women, the mob violence at Cronulla beach and the subsequent destruction of personal property, many would have been of school age during the 1980s and '90s. While Al Grassby and Gough Whitlam sowed the seeds, this was a time when governments under the leadership of Malcolm...

Chilling call to arms via SMS December 19, 2005TEXT messages on seized mobile phones have revealed calls for Arabs to unite in a war against "rednecks" and to "take Sydney from Cronulla to The Rocks".Police yesterday used new powers to confiscate mobile phones, to check for SMS messages calling for violence. Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said his officers were yesterday specially instructed to target mobile phones, after text messages were used to urge race violence at Cronulla. One officer was photographed scrolling through the contents of at least six phones. Five men of Middle Eastern descent were yesterday arrested in...

SYDNEY is suddenly a city of police and rumours. Only the other day we were basking in fresh accolades for a city rated among the most liveable in the world. And now the world is watching with us these unimaginable scenes of roadblocks, searches, arrests and massed police patrolling half-deserted beaches. Time and the courts will decide how effective the police were this weekend. For now, these past few days will be remembered as the first time in the history of this city that a trip to the beach meant passing a cordon of fully armed police. Rumours were everywhere...

LAST Sunday on Cronulla Beach, a suburb of Sydney, thousands of drunken white youths attacked anyone they believed was of Arab descent. Inspired by reports that Lebanese-Australians had assaulted two white lifeguards, text messages calling for a Lebanese "bashing day" appeared on thousands of cellphones. Some of Sunday's assailants wore T-shirts that proclaimed, "We grew here; you flew here," or, "Ethnic cleansing unit." For many, the Cronulla Beach incident did not come as a surprise. Rather, it was the bubbling up of an undercurrent that is increasingly evident in Australian life.

James Morrow: Self-loathing is the newest hate crime December 19, 2005 TO say that the Australian Left has a conflicted relationship with Australia is like saying that a heartburn sufferer has a conflicted relationship with spicy Thai curry: they may claim to love it, but put the two together and all you'll get is a lot of whingeing and hot air. This tense relationship -- which is akin to teenagers who enjoy all the comforts of living at home while complaining that mum and dad are so tragically unhip -- is always simmering in the background of Australia's cultural life....

Riots 'expose loopholes' in WA race laws. 18/12/2005. ABC News Online [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1533539.htm] Last Update: Sunday, December 18, 2005. 2:18pm (AEDT) Loophole exposed: Mr Sankaran says text messages encouraging vilification are not covered. [File photo] (Getty Images) Riots 'expose loopholes' in WA race laws The Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia says while the state has the harshest racial vilification legislation in the country, the recent riots in Sydney have exposed loopholes. The council is calling on the Western Australian Government to amend the Racial Discrimination Act. It wants changes that will stop the...

THE Sydney suburb of Brighton-le-Sands has been locked down to all but residents after a carload of men were found carrying a 25-litre drum of petrol, police scanners and portable radios. Five men have been arrested over the haul, which also included equipment to make molotov cocktails as well as commando-style utility belts, Kevlar helmets and jerry cans. The suburb, on Botany Bay in Sydney's south, is the first to have a total lockdown imposed on it under new police powers passed at an emergency sitting of parliament. Other suburbs hit by violence flowing from last Sunday's race riot at...

Fighting on the beaches exposes ugly side of life By Richard Guilliatt With police warning Australians to stay away from the seafronts and the city bracing itself for another weekend of violence, our correspondent explains the pressures behind the cultural hostility AS A mob of 5,000 “proud Aussies” fought “wogs and Lebs” at Cronulla Beach in Sydney on Sunday, one of their ringleaders — Glen Steele, a lifelong resident and former rugby player — angrily explained why Lebanese immigrants have become unwelcome on this strip of suburban surf beach. Pointing to the old saltwater pool at the end of the...

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Three Sydney teenagers have been arrested in relation to the riots on the city's southern beaches last weekend. All three will appear in court later today. Several beaches in Sydney today have been declared no-go areas, and thousands of police are ready to use tough new powers to try to prevent a repeat of last Sunday's riots. Wet weather today in Sydney might help ease the tensions. Meanwhile, the Federal Opposition says recent events in Sydney have shown the need for laws that would make it a crime to threaten particular racial or religious groups. It's already an...

A gang rape trial that culminated in one of the longest prison sentences in Australian history has triggered accusations of racism and inflamed ethnic tensions in Sydney's volatile outlying suburbs. The gang leader, known only as X, was jailed for 55 years for his part in the rapes, which were carried out by 14 youths, all of Lebanese Muslim origin. The group terrorised western Sydney in August 2000, attacking seven women during a three-week spree that was planned and co-ordinated by mobile phone. The men's ethnic background has been highlighted by police and politicians, who insist that they specifically targeted...

THE children of Lebanese migrants are under pressure to marry within their own ethnicity to keep a strong community and maintain a sense of solidarity. Monash University Centre for Population and Urban Research director Bob Birrell said second-generation Lebanese had markedly lower rates of "out-marriage" compared with Europeans and Asians, hindering their social mobility and integration. He said there was cultural pressure to keep a strong community, with high residential concentration and separate schools and mosques for people from different ethnic backgrounds. "Ethnically, they don't want to see their community break down. They want to maintain their solidarity," he said....

Years of rejection erupted in open rebellion The violent culture of Gangsta rap has found a natural home on the streets of Sydney, write Andrew Stevenson and Edmund Tadros. It's a long way from Brooklyn to the streets of Belmore, Punchbowl and Lakemba, but Tupac Shakur would find much to make him welcome. His name is sprayed on walls and fences and scratched on toilet doors. When concrete is poured, the shorthand follows: "2pac 4ever." That a dead singer finds eternal life in the adulation of fans is a curious phenomenon. Elvis is that classic cultural oddity. But Love Me...

Race riot fears turn Bondi into no-go zone By Nick Squires In Sydney (Filed: 17/12/2005) Australian police warned visitors to stay away from Bondi and other famous beaches in Sydney this weekend amid fears of another flare-up of race violence between gangs of white and Middle Eastern youths. The warning, unprecedented in a country in which the beach forms a central part of the national psyche, extended to two other cities in New South Wales. A young surfer carries her board outside a Sydney surf club Bondi was declared a virtual no-go zone for the weekend, along with other popular...

Think the debate over Tookie Williams ended with his execution? Guess again. Issuing a public challenge, The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Jasmyne Cannick have accused KFI's John and Ken of racism. They insist proof is found in the pair's supposed reluctance to insist a white man on death row be quickly put to death: The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Jasmyne Cannick have issued a public challenge to controversial radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the John and Ken Show of AM 640 KFI (Los Angeles) to prove that...