Sydney under siege
Australia’s melting pot boils over

IT IS SUPPOSED to be the lucky country, where the beach culture more than any other phenomenon symbolises all that is breezy, open and inclusive about Australia. But the cocktail of fear, alienation and youthful anger spawned by the worst racial violence ever seen here now threatens the traditional Christmas of sun, sand and surf.
Summer was effectively cancelled along 125 miles of the New South Wales coast recently as the authorities urged people to avoid beaches for fear of revenge attacks by armed hooligans.
The violence could disrupt the annual Christmas Day pilgrimage to Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous strip of sand, by more than 50,000 British and Irish expatriates and tourists. Morris Iemma, the Labour leader of New South Wales, apologised for massive security measures across Sydney, its biggest police operation since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. “It is a long-term fight to ensure the hooligans, thugs and criminals who create disorder will not win,” Iemma said.
The civil unrest gripping Australia’s biggest city began two weeks ago after two teenage lifeguards at North Cronulla beach, in south Sydney’s, were attacked by a Lebanese Australian gang. There had been anecdotes of sporadic violence and intimidation at Cronulla by groups of Lebanese Australians over several years, but this attack on the lifeguards, the most iconic of Australian symbols, went too far for many people.
“It was a culmination of so many things over so many years,” says Danny Hanley, a resident whose daughters Renae and Simone were killed in the Bali bombing. He blames it on many “crimes against ordinary Australians”.
The result last Sunday was ugly trip into the dark side of the Australian Dream. Images flashed around the world of young mates, full of alcohol, beating up a luckless few as the sun shone and the surf rolled.
They were chanting as if at a sports event: “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, Oi, Oi”. There were bursts of “Waltzing Matilda” and Australian flags were waved in the assembled throngs.
Police waded in to defend people being assaulted simply because of their skin and hair colour.
These events have left a nasty blot on Australia’s reputation – and its boast – of being a tolerant, all-embracing society. “That was the ugliest manifestation of racism we have seen so far in this country,” said Keysar Trad, head of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.
But the Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, re-elected last year on a hardline anti-immigration platform, claims the riots are criminal, not racial. “I do not accept there is underlying racism here,” he said. “Some of it is just incredibly bad behaviour fuelled by too much drink.”
Many Australians feel Howard is ignoring the problem. Others say his narrow response shows how well he has read Australia’s mood. But by not condemning the racism, Howard and Labour leader Kim Beazley have both arguably failed to show moral leadership.
The ascent of Howard has given new authority to phone-in radio, his preferred medium for reaching ordinary Australians. Serious questions are being asked about whether Sydney presenters such as Alan Jones, the Wallabies union coach, had a role in inciting last week’s violence.
In the days before the riots, Jones of Radio 2GB cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, but seemed to warm to callers who had exactly that in mind.
One caller named Charlie suggested all junior footballers in the Sutherland Shire, which includes Cronulla, should gather on the beach to support the lifesavers. “Good stuff, good stuff,” Jones told him.
In reality, Australia’s national disquiet started more than 200 years ago when Cook and his crew confronted Aborigines in Botany Bay.
But Sydney’s racial violence and the outback murder of the British backpacker Peter Falconio have only added to a growing awareness that all is not well in the lucky country.
– Guardian Newspapers Ltd

Article from: Bahrain Tribune Newspaper- www.BahrainTribune.com