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LightningBoy
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Joined: 09 Mar 2003
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Location: Minnesota, U.S.A.
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 Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:42 pm Racial Violence Flares in Sydney, Australia |
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Racial Violence Flares in Sydney, Australia
| Quote: | SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Racially motivated rioting spread through Sydney beachside suburbs through Sunday night after thousands of drunken white youths attacked police and people of Middle Eastern appearance at one beach, police said Monday.
Officers arrested 28 people in hours of street battles that left 31 people injured, including two ambulance officers and five police, New South Wales police said in a statement.
One man was hospitalized after being stabbed in the back.
The violence shocked this city of 4 million which prides itself on being a largely harmonious cultural melting pot.
"That sort of cowardly, racist behaviour is not only un-Australian, it has no place in our society," the state's political leader, Premier Morris Iemma told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Monday.
A day of confrontations began at the southern beach of Cronulla, where 5,000 white youths, many of them drunk, wrapped in Australian flags and chanting racist slurs, fought a series of skirmishes with police, attacked people of Arab appearance and assaulted a pair of ambulance officers.
The violence was a reaction to reports that youths of Lebanese ancestry were responsible for an attack last weekend on two of the beach's lifeguards.
One white teenager had the words "We grew here, you flew here" painted on his back. On the beach, someone had written "100 per cent Aussie pride" in the sand.
Two paramedics in an ambulance were injured as they tried to get youths of Middle Eastern appearance out of the Cronulla Surf Lifesaving Club, where they had fled to escape one mob.
The mob broke the vehicle's windows and kicked its doors as the paramedics tried to get the group out.
TV broadcasts showed a group of young women attacking another woman. Her ethnicity was not immediately clear.
Days ago, police increased the number of officers patrolling the beach after mobile phone text messages began circulating calling for retaliation for the attack on the lifeguards.
Television images of the alcohol and hate-fuelled brawls sparked a string of retaliations in nearby suburbs with cars full of young men of Arab descent smashing 40 cars with sticks and baseball bats, police said.
Another man of Arab appearance was being hunted after stabbing a white man in the back outside a golf club.
And nearby, rioters pelted police in full riot gear with rocks and bottles.
Calm returned as the suburbs began cleaning up Monday and authorities condemned the racial overtones of the violence.
Kuranda Seyit, director of a group called the Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations criticized all those involved in the rioting.
"Australia is pluralist society, with many faiths and traditions all ravelled into one," he said.
"This is the unique success of this nation and we cannot let it fall into chaos and lawlessness," he added. "I realize that the initial behaviour by the thugs who beat the lifeguard was unacceptable but to take it out any anyone who the mob think are not one of them, is not the solution."
Assistant police commissioner Mark Goodwin accused the crowd at Cronulla of taunting people of Middle Eastern background "with vile abuse."
Hundreds of police were involved in trying to stop the rioting, sometimes beating back crowds with batons and dousing them with pepper spray.
Sydney has many beaches, but Cronulla is one of few that are easily accessible by train and often is visited by youngsters - many of Middle Eastern ethnicity - from the poorer suburbs of western and southern Sydney.
Area residents accuse the visitors of travelling in gangs, being disrespectful and sometimes intimidating others on the beach.
Area Mayor Kevin Schreiber accused the white mob of flocking to the beach Sunday looking for a fight.
"As mayor and as a resident of Cronulla, I'm devastated by what has occurred on our beachfront," he said. "It is the actions of a few, but let's not kid ourselves that people didn't come from far and wide to participate." |
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/051211/w121150.html
Sound reminiscent of the problems in France. It's a darn shame.
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