Category Archives: Australia

Muslims to blame for Australian riots (cont.)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As in France, Australia’s Muslims have inflicted on their hosts harm that exceeds by far the scratches and other scurrilities they suffered from the surfers…. Decades of indoctrination by the ‘managerial professional elites’ were supposed to emasculate the surfer dudes for good. They were expected to toke it up or turn the other cheek. Instead, they fought back against what they perceive as a threat to their land and life. A threat that commenced approximately 40 years ago, when Australian central planners decided in favor of mass importation of immigrants from the Third World.”

Ilana Mercer in Front Page Magazine, 19 December 2005

White supremacists arrested with petrol bombs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CronullaFive white supremacists have been arrested carrying material to build petrol bombs, enabling police to claim they were vindicated after locking down more than 200km of beaches to prevent a repeat of Sydney’s ugly race riots.

The men, dressed in camouflage gear, were caught yesterday in the southern suburb of Brighton-le-Sands carrying equipment to make Molotov cocktails including 25l jerry cans filled with petrol, as well as commando-style utility belts and Kevlar helmets.

The lockdown occurred on a perfect summer weekend when many Sydneysiders were winding down ahead of Christmas and forced Premier Morris Iemma to deny the gangs had won the battle. Police officers also found car stickers promoting the white supremacist movement in the men’s car.

The Australian, 19 December 2005

Meanwhile, in today’s Observer, Australian novelist Gabrielle Carey explains: “The war is essentially between one group of macho men and another. The hatred and bigotry shown by the blond Cronulla boys is equalled by that demonstrated by their enemies, ‘the Lebs’.”

Australians march against racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aussies Against RacismThousands of Australians in Sydney and Newcastle rallied on Sunday, December 18, against racism after a week of violence against Arabs and Muslims.

About 2,000 people have marched through the streets of Sydney’s central business district calling for racial harmony and understanding, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.

Unite Against Racism Rally organiser and National Union of Students (NUS) anti-racism officer, Osmond Chiu, said today was about uniting in opposition to a racist Australia. “The riots have drawn attention to the racism in this country,” Chiu told the paper. “I am shocked and appalled by what’s been happening, I never fathomed anything of this scale, that such violent racist clashes, could happen here.”

Chiu condemned some media and political leaders who he said may have fuelled the riots. He was particularly critical of Macquarie Radio for “spreading word about the wave of text messages this week that urged further race-based attacks.”

The rampage began when more than 5,000 people gathered at Sydney’s Cronulla beach last Sunday, December 11, after e-mail and mobile phone messages called on local residents to beat-up “Lebs and wogs” – racial slurs for people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern origin. They moved after Lebanese youths had beaten a beach guard for reportedly snatching the hijab of a beachgoer.

Chiu also called on Prime Minister John Howard to admit the existence of racism in Australia. “John Howard, the leader of our country, has denied that racism played a part in the week’s violence,” he said. “He needs to admit that racism played a big part in what happened.”

Islam Online, 18 December 2005 

See also “Rally cry: ‘We are all Australians'”, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 December 2005

Leadership required to create calm – Australian Arabic Council

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The Australian Arabic Council (AAC) today voiced concern and alarm at reports that text messages are remaining to circulate in Sydney and spreading to Melbourne and other Australian cities.

Speaking for the AAC, Chairman, Roland Jabbour said the riots, must be condemned by all, recognised for what they are as ‘racially motivated’, and long-term not quick fix solutions found.

“These events of the last few days have exposed the anti-Arab racism that exists in Australia. Arab Australians have had to cope for sometime with vilification, racism and abuse after numerous international and domestic events. We are more than anybody aware of the fringe elements of society that have racist agendas and prejudicial propensities.

“This reality must now be recognised by political leaders and government agencies as a significant impingement on the rights of Arab and Muslim citizens.

“The AAC has for some time predicted the occurrence of events over the last few days. We are now concerned that similar sentiments and ‘calls to action by people with racist agendas’ are now spreading to Melbourne and other cities.”

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Germaine Greer on Cronulla

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… it does seem that Australian-born Muslim teenagers have finally had enough. Antagonism towards them has been mounting for years, so that even the most presentable middle-class young men of Middle-Eastern appearance find themselves routinely turned away from clubs and effectively ostracised from mainstream youth culture.” Germaine Greer on the background to the clashes in Cronulla.

Guardian, 15 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (3)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The attack on a surf patrol on Cronulla beach a week ago was the notional trigger for Sunday’s events, but the tangled roots of anger lie deep within the failed multicultural policies foisted on an unsuspecting nation decades back. Though sold with the help of such anodyne ditties as ‘I Am, You Are, We Are Australian’, it has long been apparent many people from certain migrant groups – notably Lebanese Muslims – neither think of themselves as Aussies nor wish to embrace the extraordinary tolerance identified as a remarkable Australian trait….

“Though branch-stacking politicians and academics might like to think multiculturalism is all about exotic clothing and tasty kebabs, those residents who have remained in suburbs subjected to the multicultural experiment feel neglected. They believe they have had to cope with carjackings, gang rapes, drive-by shootings, the occasional explosion at the football, amplified calls to prayer, and gangs of violent young men who boast that they are proud not to be Australian. They have watched newer residents adopt a culture of entitlement and victimhood such that unemployment rates among Muslims are now five and six times those of non-Muslims….

“Those who claim to be outsiders in Australian society must ask whether their isolation is self-imposed, whether they live in self-made ghettos and have made any attempt to accept the culture of the land they have chosen to live in. They have no one to blame but themselves, their parents and community leaders if they accept second-class citizenship and an apartheid of their own making.”

Piers Akerman in the Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips agrees with Tim Priest: “… the widespread spin that has been placed on this disorder, that it has been caused by white racists and that what it reveals is that, under its veneer of multiculturalism, Australia is a fundamentally racist society positively heaving with people with despicable views who have been itching to have a pop at blameless Lebanese Muslims, is very wide of the mark. For it appears that the current unrest was sparked by Lebanese Muslim attacks on two indigenous lifeguards, and that this was only the tip of an iceberg of aggression by this minority which – thanks to the censorship imposed by multiculturalism – has gone all but unreported.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 14 December 2005

‘Is Islam the problem?’ Australian columnist asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Australia does not have a race relations problem. We have a clash of cultures and that’s a big difference – and maybe the problem is certain forms of Islam…. Any form of discrimination based on race or ethnicity – based on the colour of one’s skin or hair or eyes – is inherently immoral, illogical and evil. But culture and religion are behavioural. They involve values…. And if people freely embrace a culture that is antithetical to the prevailing social mores – in our case, I would hope, liberal, enlightenment values – then we are entitled to judge, object, censure and even discriminate…. I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law. I cannot celebrate such culture…”

Andrew West in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2005

Blame Muslims for Australian riots

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Of course, the usual claque of agenda-driven ethnic community leaders were quick to condemn the Cronulla incidents as un-Australian and racist. Never mind the multitude of racist attacks on young Australian men and women during the past decade, which have now manifested into full-blown racial retaliation. In an article on this page nearly two years ago (‘Don’t turn a blind eye to terror in our midst’, January 12, 2004), I argued that the increasing frequency of racially motivated attacks on young Australian men and women – including murders, gang rapes and serious assaults by young men of Lebanese Muslim descent – would rise dramatically throughout Australia. These problems remain widespread and have been documented in the ensuing two years. Yet the NSW Labor Government and police have failed to address the issues in any way….”

Tim Priest in The Australian, 13 December 2005

Race violence erupts in Sydney

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cronulla riot

Australian Prime Minister John Howard called for ethnic and religious tolerance on Monday after racial violence, spurred on police say by white supremacists, erupted in parts of Sydney.

Racial tension sparked violence on Cronulla Beach on Sunday when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked youths of Middle Eastern background, saying they were defending their beach after lifesavers were attacked there last week.

Violence then spread to a second beach, Maroubra, where scores of men armed with baseball bats smashed about 100 cars.

“Attacking people on the basis of race and ethnicity is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians, irrespective of background and politics,” Howard told a news conference on Monday, by which time the violence had subsided.

At Botany Bay, riot police confronted hundreds of youths and police said a man was stabbed in the back in a southern Sydney suburb in what media reports said appeared to be racial violence. New South Wales (NSW) police said a group of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists stirred on the drunken crowd at Cronulla.

“There appears to be an element of white supremacists and they really have no place in mainstream Australian society. Those sort of characters are best placed in Berlin 1930s, not in Cronulla 2005,” NSW Police Minister Carl Scully told reporters.

On Sunday, mobs of drunken and angry youths, some draped in Australian flags, shouted “No more Lebs (Lebanese)”. The mobs chased and attacked Australians of Middle East appearance, rushing onto a train at one stage to fight. More than 20 people were injured and 12 arrested.

Arabic and Muslim leaders said the violence had been expected as Muslims had been subjected to racist taunts, especially since the Iraq war and bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali where many Australians were among the dead.

“Arab Australians have had to cope with vilification, racism, abuse and fear of a racial backlash for a number of years, but these riots will take that fear to a new level,” said Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour.

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