Racial violence shocks Australian city (AP) Updated: 2005-12-12 15:02
Thousands of drunken white youths attacked
police and people they believed were Arab immigrants at a Sydney beach on Sunday,
angered by reports that youths of Lebanese descent had assaulted two lifeguards.
An image from Australia's Sky News shows a man
shouting as police stand by to quell racial violence which erupted on
Sydney beaches on December 11, 2005. Australian Prime Minister John Howard
denied that government warnings of home-grown Islamic militants had
fuelled weekend race riots targeting Middle Easterners. [AFP/Sky
News]
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Young men of Arab descent retaliated in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with
police and smashing 40 cars with sticks and bats, police said.
Thirty-one people were injured and 28 were arrested in hours of violence.
Police said they were seeking an Arab man who allegedly stabbed a white man in
the back.
The city was calm Monday, and police formed a strike force to track down the
instigators.
Some 5,000 white youths, wrapped in Australian flags and
chanting racist slurs, fought with police, attacked people of Arab appearance
and assaulted a pair of paramedics at Cronulla beach in southern Sydney, police said. Police fought back with batons and pepper
spray.
A man is arrested at Cronulla Beach in Sydney,
Australia, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005, after ethnic tensions erupted into
running battles between police and a mob of thousands of youths, many
chanting racial slurs. At least six people were arrested and several
injured in alcohol-fueled fights at the beach.
[AP] |
Prime Minister John Howard condemned the violence, but said he did not
believe racism was widespread in Australia.
"Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their
ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians
irrespective of their own background and their politics," Howard said.
He added, "I'm not going to put a general tag (of) racism on the Australian
community."
The rioters were reacting to reports that youths of Lebanese descent were
responsible for an attack last weekend on two of the beach's lifeguards.
Police had increased the number of officers patrolling the beach after mobile
phone text messages circulated calling for retaliation for the attack on the
guards.
One white teenager among the rioters had the words "We grew here, you flew
here" painted on his back. On the sand, someone had written "100 percent Aussie
pride."
Two paramedics in an ambulance were injured as they tried to help youths
trying to escape rioters, when members of the mob smashed the vehicle's windows
and kicked its doors.
TV broadcasts showed a group of young women attacking another woman, whose
ethnicity was not immediately clear.
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