Government and media provocations spark racist violence on Sydney beaches
Rick Kelly | 12.12.2005 17:12 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Culture | World
Both the Liberals and the Laborites are committed to implementing deeply unpopular right-wing economic reforms--exacerbating social inequality, eliminating job security, and driving down wages and living conditions. The two parties seek to deflect opposition to their agenda by fomenting racial divisions in order to channel the insecurity and disaffection felt by millions of ordinary people into deeply reactionary channels. At the most fundamental level, that is what caused Sunday's events.
Fomenting racial divisions
AUSTRALIA: Violence erupted on Sydney's beaches Sunday, following days of media provocation. Some 5,000 people rallied against so-called "Lebanese gangs", then attacked immigrants and Muslims, who had been accused over the past week of harassing beach-goers. More than 20 people were injured, and two were stabbed, in confrontations across a number of Sydney's eastern suburbs. About 100 cars were also vandalised.
Responsibility for the terrible clashes rests squarely with the federal Howard government and the state Labor government. Both administrations have cultivated a climate of nationalism, racism, and backwardness, without which Sunday's riot could not have occurred. The level of tension that has developed between young "Anglo" and "ethnic" Australians on Sydney's beaches is another malignant expression of the political establishment's attacks on "Middle Eastern gangs", refugees, and alleged "terrorists".
Tensions on the popular North Cronulla Beach escalated on December 4, when a lifesaver was allegedly assaulted by an 18-year-old man of Lebanese descent from the western working-class suburb of Bankstown. On December 7, a racist text message was sent to local residents, calling on every "Aussie" to get to the beach on Sunday, "to support Leb and wog bashing day. Bring your mates and let's show them that this is our beach and they are never welcome ... let's kill these boys."
Sunday morning, 5,000 predominantly young people gathered on the beach, waving Australian flags, and singing "Waltzing Matilda" and the national anthem. Extreme right-wing and neo-Nazi groups distributed literature among the crowd, many of whom were drunk. The mob chanted nationalist and racist slogans directed against Lebanese people.
People in the crowd then attacked anyone they found who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent or a Muslim. Numbers of young people visiting the beach were assaulted with fists, feet, and bottles. One woman had her head scarf torn off, and was forced to flee to the surf lifesaving club for protection. Two girls were also attacked, to shouts of "Kill the Leb b----s" from the crowd.
Dozens of thugs stormed the local train station and viciously attacked two men. Ambulance officers trying to help the injured were also attacked, and beer bottles thrown at their vehicles. Police vehicles were targeted as well. Drunken teenagers reportedly roamed the streets surrounding North Cronulla Beach, coordinating their attacks with walkie talkies.
"They threw bottles, broken bottles, food, anything they could get their hands on," 19-year old Mustafa, one of the victims, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "And what were we doing? We were there for a swim." Local resident Sarah Id, 17, is the child of Lebanese immigrants. "We had to get out because everyone was telling us to go home," she told the Herald. "They were saying, 'You don't belong here.' We were born here and went to Jannali High [a local school]."
In retaliatory attacks, about 50 young men of Middle Eastern descent later drove through the eastern suburbs, slashing car tyres and breaking windscreens with baseball bats. The youths also clashed with members of the "Bra Boys", a local surf-based gang, in Maroubra.
Riot police were mobilised across Sydney's eastern suburbs in response to rumours of further violent incidents, and police helicopters roamed the skies above the beaches.
A number of residents in the eastern suburbs told reporters of their revulsion about the day's events, and expressed their opposition to the racist attacks. One local, Dane Wheeler, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he believed that most of the mob had come from outside the area. Another resident courageously walked through the crowd wearing a t-shirt which read: "I'm ashamed to be an Australian in Cronulla. December 11, a day of racism."
Media incitement
While every media outlet has feigned outrage over Sunday's events, the violence was the culmination of a week-long campaign of provocation and incitement by the media, particularly by the Murdoch press and "shock-jock" talkback radio. Immediately following last week's alleged assault on the lifeguard, right-wing media outlets launched a blatantly racist campaign against immigrant Muslim youth.
A sample of the headlines in the Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph, gives a flavour of the campaign. On December 6: "Fight for Cronulla: we want our beach back". On December 7: "Gangs turn Cronulla beach into war zone". The gangs referred to were not, of course, local surf gangs and racist groups, but rather "thugs of Middle Eastern descent". Last Friday the Telegraph's front page screamed, "NOT ON OUR BEACH: Cronulla police vow to defend Australian way". Throughout the week, letters to the editor on the issue--a number of which were critical of the newspaper's coverage--were published under the subheadings, "Let's make it safe to go back to the water" and "Let's unite to fight this shame on the beaches".
Last Friday the Telegraph also dedicated a large part of its lead op-ed piece to a sympathetic interview with Koby Abberton, one of the leaders of the Bra Boys gang. Abberton, the newspaper explained, spoke with reporters, "to offer a view on why his home beach--Maroubra--is one of the few in Sydney not to have been swamped by Middle Eastern gangs in recent years".
Explicitly racist commentary was by no means the sole reserve of the tabloid press. The major op-ed column by Paul Sheehan published in today's "liberal" Sydney Morning Herald attacked Middle Eastern immigrant youth. After first downplaying Sunday's violence as merely "the actions of a minority of idiots", Sheehan attacked the "alien subculture" of Lebanese gangs.
"The cops hate and fear the swarming packs of Lebanese who respond when some of their numbers are confronted, mobilising quickly via mobile phones and showing open contempt for Australian law," he writes. "All this is the real world, as distinct from the world preferred by ideological academics who talk about 'moral panic' and the oppression of Muslims. They will see only Australian racism as the problem."
Labor, Coalition responsibility
Media provocation, however, can only be understood as an expression of the broader political climate of racism and backwardness that has been consciously promoted by both federal and state governments in recent years.
Prime Minister John Howard has based much of his political career on anti-immigrant attacks. Immediately after his election in 1996, he gave tacit support to the racist ideas promoted by the extreme-right politician Pauline Hanson. The Liberal-National Coalition won re-election in 2001 on the basis of a filthy anti-refugee campaign, engineered around the lie that asylum seekers had thrown their children into the sea as part of an attempt to reach Australia.
The government has scapegoated Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants ever since the September 11 terrorist attack and the so-called war on terror. Immigrants and refugees have been repeatedly labelled "potential terrorists" by government ministers, and significant numbers have been the targets of intimidatory police raids. Howard has advanced all of this in the nationalistic framework of "protecting our way of life".
In response to Sunday's events, the prime minister pointedly refused to condemn the 5,000-strong mob as racist. "I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag [of] racism on the Australian community," he declared. "I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so."
The Labor Party, at both the federal and state levels, has been complicit in all of Howard's manoeuvres. In New South Wales, the state Labor government has constantly incited racial and religious divisions, and has cultivated an atmosphere of anti-Muslim racism.
Bob Carr, Labor premier of the state between 1995 and July this year, made repeated attacks on immigrant youth during his term in office. In 2001, Carr called for police racial profiling, after a group of men of Middle Eastern background were convicted of rape. He also demanded that the Howard government restrict immigration--claiming that criminals and potential terrorists were able to enter the country too easily. Carr also orchestrated a series of police raids on Indonesian and Middle Eastern immigrant families accused of involvement in terrorism. The current premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, was complicit in all of his predecessor's actions.
Sunday's violence was another indicator of the extreme social tensions that exist within Australian society. Sydney's western suburbs, where most of the young Muslims accused of gang activity live, feature high levels of poverty and youth unemployment, and a lack of recreational facilities. The city's eastern suburbs, such as Cronulla and Maroubra, while appearing relatively prosperous, also have high levels of youth unemployment.
The New South Wales Labor government's reliance on vicious "law and order" campaigns and the Howard government's promotion of the most backward forms of Australian nationalism are driven by the same political imperative.
Both the Liberals and the Laborites are committed to implementing deeply unpopular right-wing economic reforms--exacerbating social inequality, eliminating job security, and driving down wages and living conditions. The two parties seek to deflect opposition to their agenda by fomenting racial divisions in order to channel the insecurity and disaffection felt by millions of ordinary people into deeply reactionary channels. At the most fundamental level, that is what caused Sunday's events.
WSWS.org
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/riot-d12.shtml
Related:
Cronulla race riot
The lifesavers asked for it!
The Mainscream Media asked for it!
The Police asked for it!
Then the community decided it was ok to be racist!
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/9715
Race Riot Nationalists spread to third Sydney suburb
The latest violence comes after a racially motivated pro-government right wing Nationalist media taking John HoWARd's lead, ended up in a riot at Cronulla Beach which saw several people of Middle Eastern appearance attacked. Shame HoWARd....Shame on you!
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9717/index.php
Thugs ruled the streets, and the mob sang Waltzing Matilda
Sometimes when a victim was cornered, the mob started singing Waltzing Matilda. Advance Australia Fair was similarly employed against obstructing police, and the usually good-natured "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant in the mouths of the Cronulla crew assumed a menacing tone.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9719/index.php
International Human Rights Day
One of the events for International Human Rights Day in Melbourne was a rally outside the State Library attended by about 100 people on Saturday December 10. Issues canvassed by speakers included opposition to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, treatment of indigenous Australians, opposition to the "anti-terror" laws, and scapegoating of the muslim community.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9714/index.php
Christmas in Guantanamo
After four long years, David Hicks - and scores of others - have been confined in steel cages in Guantanamo Bay, without trial or charge. Here in Australia, draconian anti-terror laws abolish some of our most cherished freedoms, and give ASIO and the Australian Federal Police carte blanche to treat the Islamic community like criminals.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9696/index.php
Australian treasurer steps up ideological offensive against welfare recipients
The treasurer's comment piece was released shortly before the Senate passed the Howard government's "Welfare to Work" Bill on November 6. The new legislation will slash welfare payments for thousands of new claimants, and force single parents and the disabled into low-wage jobs. By driving down the living conditions of some of the most vulnerable members of the community, the government intends to create an enlarged pool of cheap labour available for exploitation.
More: http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/9710
Politically manipulated police raids in Australia
In the largest such operation yet seen in Australia--reportedly involving 850 federal and state police and intelligence personne--heavily-armed officers burst into at least 23 homes in Sydney and Melbourne in the pre-dawn hours of yesterday morning and arrested 17 Islamic men on vague and unspecified terrorism charges. Today, raids are still continuing in Sydney, amid angry protests by family members.
More: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/raid-n09.shtml
Responsibility for the terrible clashes rests squarely with the federal Howard government and the state Labor government. Both administrations have cultivated a climate of nationalism, racism, and backwardness, without which Sunday's riot could not have occurred. The level of tension that has developed between young "Anglo" and "ethnic" Australians on Sydney's beaches is another malignant expression of the political establishment's attacks on "Middle Eastern gangs", refugees, and alleged "terrorists".
Tensions on the popular North Cronulla Beach escalated on December 4, when a lifesaver was allegedly assaulted by an 18-year-old man of Lebanese descent from the western working-class suburb of Bankstown. On December 7, a racist text message was sent to local residents, calling on every "Aussie" to get to the beach on Sunday, "to support Leb and wog bashing day. Bring your mates and let's show them that this is our beach and they are never welcome ... let's kill these boys."
Sunday morning, 5,000 predominantly young people gathered on the beach, waving Australian flags, and singing "Waltzing Matilda" and the national anthem. Extreme right-wing and neo-Nazi groups distributed literature among the crowd, many of whom were drunk. The mob chanted nationalist and racist slogans directed against Lebanese people.
People in the crowd then attacked anyone they found who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent or a Muslim. Numbers of young people visiting the beach were assaulted with fists, feet, and bottles. One woman had her head scarf torn off, and was forced to flee to the surf lifesaving club for protection. Two girls were also attacked, to shouts of "Kill the Leb b----s" from the crowd.
Dozens of thugs stormed the local train station and viciously attacked two men. Ambulance officers trying to help the injured were also attacked, and beer bottles thrown at their vehicles. Police vehicles were targeted as well. Drunken teenagers reportedly roamed the streets surrounding North Cronulla Beach, coordinating their attacks with walkie talkies.
"They threw bottles, broken bottles, food, anything they could get their hands on," 19-year old Mustafa, one of the victims, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "And what were we doing? We were there for a swim." Local resident Sarah Id, 17, is the child of Lebanese immigrants. "We had to get out because everyone was telling us to go home," she told the Herald. "They were saying, 'You don't belong here.' We were born here and went to Jannali High [a local school]."
In retaliatory attacks, about 50 young men of Middle Eastern descent later drove through the eastern suburbs, slashing car tyres and breaking windscreens with baseball bats. The youths also clashed with members of the "Bra Boys", a local surf-based gang, in Maroubra.
Riot police were mobilised across Sydney's eastern suburbs in response to rumours of further violent incidents, and police helicopters roamed the skies above the beaches.
A number of residents in the eastern suburbs told reporters of their revulsion about the day's events, and expressed their opposition to the racist attacks. One local, Dane Wheeler, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he believed that most of the mob had come from outside the area. Another resident courageously walked through the crowd wearing a t-shirt which read: "I'm ashamed to be an Australian in Cronulla. December 11, a day of racism."
Media incitement
While every media outlet has feigned outrage over Sunday's events, the violence was the culmination of a week-long campaign of provocation and incitement by the media, particularly by the Murdoch press and "shock-jock" talkback radio. Immediately following last week's alleged assault on the lifeguard, right-wing media outlets launched a blatantly racist campaign against immigrant Muslim youth.
A sample of the headlines in the Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph, gives a flavour of the campaign. On December 6: "Fight for Cronulla: we want our beach back". On December 7: "Gangs turn Cronulla beach into war zone". The gangs referred to were not, of course, local surf gangs and racist groups, but rather "thugs of Middle Eastern descent". Last Friday the Telegraph's front page screamed, "NOT ON OUR BEACH: Cronulla police vow to defend Australian way". Throughout the week, letters to the editor on the issue--a number of which were critical of the newspaper's coverage--were published under the subheadings, "Let's make it safe to go back to the water" and "Let's unite to fight this shame on the beaches".
Last Friday the Telegraph also dedicated a large part of its lead op-ed piece to a sympathetic interview with Koby Abberton, one of the leaders of the Bra Boys gang. Abberton, the newspaper explained, spoke with reporters, "to offer a view on why his home beach--Maroubra--is one of the few in Sydney not to have been swamped by Middle Eastern gangs in recent years".
Explicitly racist commentary was by no means the sole reserve of the tabloid press. The major op-ed column by Paul Sheehan published in today's "liberal" Sydney Morning Herald attacked Middle Eastern immigrant youth. After first downplaying Sunday's violence as merely "the actions of a minority of idiots", Sheehan attacked the "alien subculture" of Lebanese gangs.
"The cops hate and fear the swarming packs of Lebanese who respond when some of their numbers are confronted, mobilising quickly via mobile phones and showing open contempt for Australian law," he writes. "All this is the real world, as distinct from the world preferred by ideological academics who talk about 'moral panic' and the oppression of Muslims. They will see only Australian racism as the problem."
Labor, Coalition responsibility
Media provocation, however, can only be understood as an expression of the broader political climate of racism and backwardness that has been consciously promoted by both federal and state governments in recent years.
Prime Minister John Howard has based much of his political career on anti-immigrant attacks. Immediately after his election in 1996, he gave tacit support to the racist ideas promoted by the extreme-right politician Pauline Hanson. The Liberal-National Coalition won re-election in 2001 on the basis of a filthy anti-refugee campaign, engineered around the lie that asylum seekers had thrown their children into the sea as part of an attempt to reach Australia.
The government has scapegoated Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants ever since the September 11 terrorist attack and the so-called war on terror. Immigrants and refugees have been repeatedly labelled "potential terrorists" by government ministers, and significant numbers have been the targets of intimidatory police raids. Howard has advanced all of this in the nationalistic framework of "protecting our way of life".
In response to Sunday's events, the prime minister pointedly refused to condemn the 5,000-strong mob as racist. "I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag [of] racism on the Australian community," he declared. "I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so."
The Labor Party, at both the federal and state levels, has been complicit in all of Howard's manoeuvres. In New South Wales, the state Labor government has constantly incited racial and religious divisions, and has cultivated an atmosphere of anti-Muslim racism.
Bob Carr, Labor premier of the state between 1995 and July this year, made repeated attacks on immigrant youth during his term in office. In 2001, Carr called for police racial profiling, after a group of men of Middle Eastern background were convicted of rape. He also demanded that the Howard government restrict immigration--claiming that criminals and potential terrorists were able to enter the country too easily. Carr also orchestrated a series of police raids on Indonesian and Middle Eastern immigrant families accused of involvement in terrorism. The current premier of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, was complicit in all of his predecessor's actions.
Sunday's violence was another indicator of the extreme social tensions that exist within Australian society. Sydney's western suburbs, where most of the young Muslims accused of gang activity live, feature high levels of poverty and youth unemployment, and a lack of recreational facilities. The city's eastern suburbs, such as Cronulla and Maroubra, while appearing relatively prosperous, also have high levels of youth unemployment.
The New South Wales Labor government's reliance on vicious "law and order" campaigns and the Howard government's promotion of the most backward forms of Australian nationalism are driven by the same political imperative.
Both the Liberals and the Laborites are committed to implementing deeply unpopular right-wing economic reforms--exacerbating social inequality, eliminating job security, and driving down wages and living conditions. The two parties seek to deflect opposition to their agenda by fomenting racial divisions in order to channel the insecurity and disaffection felt by millions of ordinary people into deeply reactionary channels. At the most fundamental level, that is what caused Sunday's events.
WSWS.org
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/riot-d12.shtml Related:
Cronulla race riot
The lifesavers asked for it!
The Mainscream Media asked for it!
The Police asked for it!
Then the community decided it was ok to be racist!
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/9715 Race Riot Nationalists spread to third Sydney suburb
The latest violence comes after a racially motivated pro-government right wing Nationalist media taking John HoWARd's lead, ended up in a riot at Cronulla Beach which saw several people of Middle Eastern appearance attacked. Shame HoWARd....Shame on you!
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9717/index.php Thugs ruled the streets, and the mob sang Waltzing Matilda
Sometimes when a victim was cornered, the mob started singing Waltzing Matilda. Advance Australia Fair was similarly employed against obstructing police, and the usually good-natured "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant in the mouths of the Cronulla crew assumed a menacing tone.
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9719/index.php International Human Rights Day
One of the events for International Human Rights Day in Melbourne was a rally outside the State Library attended by about 100 people on Saturday December 10. Issues canvassed by speakers included opposition to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, treatment of indigenous Australians, opposition to the "anti-terror" laws, and scapegoating of the muslim community.
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9714/index.php Christmas in Guantanamo
After four long years, David Hicks - and scores of others - have been confined in steel cages in Guantanamo Bay, without trial or charge. Here in Australia, draconian anti-terror laws abolish some of our most cherished freedoms, and give ASIO and the Australian Federal Police carte blanche to treat the Islamic community like criminals.
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9696/index.php Australian treasurer steps up ideological offensive against welfare recipients
The treasurer's comment piece was released shortly before the Senate passed the Howard government's "Welfare to Work" Bill on November 6. The new legislation will slash welfare payments for thousands of new claimants, and force single parents and the disabled into low-wage jobs. By driving down the living conditions of some of the most vulnerable members of the community, the government intends to create an enlarged pool of cheap labour available for exploitation.
More:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/9710 Politically manipulated police raids in Australia
In the largest such operation yet seen in Australia--reportedly involving 850 federal and state police and intelligence personne--heavily-armed officers burst into at least 23 homes in Sydney and Melbourne in the pre-dawn hours of yesterday morning and arrested 17 Islamic men on vague and unspecified terrorism charges. Today, raids are still continuing in Sydney, amid angry protests by family members.
More:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/raid-n09.shtml
Rick Kelly
Comments
Display the following 10 comments