|
History > Australia > 2004-2005
added 16.2.2005
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/oceania/aussnew.htm
http://www.international-travel-tours.com/travel-australia/map-of-australia.html
4.30pm update
Sydney suffers
second night of race riots
Monday December 12, 2005
Staff and agencies
Guardian Unlimited
Race riots broke out for a second night in Sydney tonight
despite appeals from the prime minister, John Howard, for ethnic and religious
tolerance.
Police said gangs of youths from outside the southern beach
suburb of Cronulla had driven through the town smashing shop windows and
damaging houses and flats in apparent revenge attacks for yesterday's violence.
"We have shops damaged at Caringbah, cars damaged at Cronulla," said Paul
Bugden, a spokesman for New South Wales police. "We have six arrests at this
stage."
Local media said gangs of up to 200 men had been attacking people in the
streets, knocking some unconscious. A large gang also descended on a local
mosque in the district of Maroubra, but it was protected by up to 20 police
cars. Officers reportedly confiscated iron bars and other weapons from rival
gangs.
Mr Howard today condemned yesterday's race riots as "totally unacceptable" and
appealed for calm. "Attacking people on the basis of race and ethnicity is
totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of
background and politics," he said.
Violence broke out on Sunday after two lifeguards were attacked at Cronulla
earlier in the week, allegedly by a group of Lebanese men.
Some 5,000 people attended a rally in the area as gangs of young white men began
attacking people of Middle Eastern appearance. The fighting spread to other
areas of Sydney in a series of apparent revenge attacks by members of the Muslim
community.
The riots left more than 30 people injured, including police and medical staff,
and led to 16 arrests. One man was taken to hospital after being stabbed.
Last night Morris Iemma, the Labour premier of New South Wales, said police
would hunt down those responsible for starting the riots, which authorities
believe were encouraged by neo-Nazis.
"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, Carl Scully, the police minister, said.
Mr Howard denied that Australia had a problem with racism. "I do not accept that
there is underlying racism in this country," he said. "This nation of ours has
been able to absorb millions of people from different parts of the world over a
period of some 40 years, and we have done so with remarkable success."
Mr Howard was speaking as local media reported that police had intercepted text
messages calling for revenge attacks for the riots next weekend.
Mr Iemma called senior Muslim and community leaders together in a bid to prevent
any further attacks.
Kuranda Seyit, the director of Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations,
criticised all those involved in the rioting.
"Australia is a 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."
"There is no place in our free, democratic and civil society for racist and mob
violence," said Sydney's Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen.
"We must look to the root causes of this social disharmony, seek authentic
information about them, and deal with those matters," he said.
Last year, rioting broke out in a mainly Aborigine area of Sydney. The fighting
began after TJ Hickey, 17, died after being impaled on a fence when he fell off
his bike in Redfern. Police denied claims he was being chased by officers at the
time.
The fighting lasted nine hours, leaving 40 police injured and leading to more
than five arrests. At the time, the riots were labelled the worst in Sydney's
history.
Sydney suffers second
night of race riots, G, 12.12.2005,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1665366,00.html
Youths attack
a man of Middle Eastern descent on a beachside
street
at Cronulla in Sydney, 11 December 2005.
Twenty-five people were injured
and 16 were arrested
as a race riot raged on
Cronulla beach in south Sydney.
AFP -- Getty Images
December 12, 2005
Racial Violence Continues in Australia
NYT
12.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Australia-Racial-Unrest.html
Racial Violence Continues in Australia
December 12, 2005
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:56 a.m. ET
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Young people riding in vehicles
smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney late Monday, a day after
thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab
descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia's worst outbursts of
racial violence.
Sunday's attack -- apparently prompted by reports that Lebanese youths had
assaulted two lifeguards -- sparked retaliation by young men of Arab descent in
several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and smashing 40 cars with sticks
and bats, police said. Thirty-one people were injured and 16 were arrested in
hours of violence.
The rampage on Monday broke out in Cronulla, the same coastal suburb where the
violence began, and in neighboring Carringbah, said Paul Bugden, spokesman for
New South Wales police. Calm was restored by early Tuesday.
Bugden said six people were arrested and one person apparently was hit by a rock
in Monday's violence. He did not have descriptions of those involved in the
rampage, but he said it ''obviously stems from the last 24-48 hours.''
Australian Associated Press, citing a resident who declined to be named, said
men riding in up to 50 cars and wielding baseball bats converged on Cronulla,
smashing cars. Ambulances were called to help at least one injured man seen
lying on the side of the road.
Steven Dawson said a bottle thrown through his apartment window in the suburb of
Brighton-Le-Sands showered his 5-month-old son Caleb with glass, but did not
hurt the child.
Horst Dreizner said a car had rammed into his denture store and he feared the
violence would escalate. ''Personally, I think it is only the beginning,'' he
said in a telephone interview.
Elsewhere, about 300 people of Arab descent demonstrated against Sunday's attack
outside one of Sydney's largest mosques, amid tight security.
The riots began Sunday after rumors circulated that youths of Lebanese descent
were responsible for an attack last weekend on two lifeguards at Cronulla Beach.
Police said the assault was not believed to be racially motivated.
Police, meanwhile, formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the
attack, some of whom were believed to be from white supremacist groups. Police
said they were also seeking an Arab man who allegedly stabbed a white man in the
back.
Morris Iemma, the premier of New South Wales state, said police would use video
images and photographs to track down the instigators. ''Let's be very clear, the
police will be unrelenting in their fight against these thugs and hooligans,''
he said.
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.
But he added: ''I'm not going to put a general tag (of) racism on the Australian
community.''
Australia has long prided itself on accepting immigrants -- from Italians and
Greeks after World War II to families fleeing political strife in the Middle
East and Southeast Asia. In the last census in 2001, nearly a quarter of
Australia's 20 million people said they were born overseas.
However, tensions between youths of Arabic descent and white Australians have
been rising in recent years, largely because of anti-Muslim sentiment fueled by
the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States and deadly bombings on
the Indonesian island of Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians,
in October 2002.
About 300,000 Muslims live in Australia, the majority in large cities.
''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 Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council.
Police had increased the number of officers patrolling the beach in the Sydney
suburb on Sunday after cell phone text messages urged people to gather there to
retaliate for the attack on the lifeguards.
Police said more than 5,000 white youths, some wrapped in Australian flags and
chanting racist slurs, fought with police, attacked people they believed to be
of Arab descent and assaulted a pair of paramedics trying to help people escape
the riot.
Police fought back with batons and pepper spray.
Many of the youths had been drinking heavily, police said. One white teenager
had the words ''We grew here, you flew here'' painted on his back. Someone had
written ''100 percent Aussie pride'' in the sand. TV broadcasts showed a group
of young women attacking another woman, whose ethnicity was not clear.
The violence shocked this city of 4 million that considers itself a cultural
melting pot.
''What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in
Australia and perhaps we have not seen in Australia in any of our lifetimes and
that is a mass call to violence based on race,'' Community Relations Commission
chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.
Cronulla Beach, which is easily accessible by train but is not a popular
destination for foreign tourists, is often visited by youngsters from poorer
suburbs, many of them of Arab descent. Residents accuse the youths of traveling
in gangs and sometimes intimidating other beachgoers.
Aborigines rioted in the Sydney neighborhood of Redfern in February 2004 after
blaming police for the death of a 17-year-old boy. Forty police were wounded.
Racial Violence
Continues in Australia, NYT, 12.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Australia-Racial-Unrest.html
Emeutes à Sydney
après la mort d'un jeune aborigène
16 février 07:25:23
Libération
Michael Perry
SYDNEY - De violents
incidents ont éclaté dimanche soir dans un ghetto de Sydney après la mort
accidentelle d'un jeune aborigène imputée à des policiers par sa mère.
Pendant près de neuf heures, une centaine d'aborigènes ont affronté les
forces de l'ordre à coups de briques et de bouteilles à l'intérieur du "Block",
un ghetto aborigène qui s'étend sur quelques rues situées près de la gare de
Redfern, à quelques kilomètres du centre d'affaires de Sydney.
Un incendie s'est déclaré dans la station de Redfern, une voiture a été
détruite par les flammes et plusieurs vitrines brisées lors de ces émeutes
urbaines.
Selon le commissaire adjoint Bob Waites, les émeutiers ont lancé des
pierres, des briques et des bouteilles de verre sur les rangs des forces de
l'ordre.
Quelque 200 policiers avaient été déployés dans le ghetto pour tenter de
mettre fin aux violences. Une cinquantaine d'entre eux ont été blessés, dont
huit se trouvaient toujours à l'hôpital lundi matin.
Cinq émeutiers ont été arrêtés pendant ou après les affrontements. On ne
dispose en revanche d'aucune information sur d'éventuelles victimes parmi les
habitants du quartier.
Ces violences ont éclaté après la mort d'un adolescent de 17 ans, Thomas
Hickey, qui a chuté samedi de son vélo et s'est empalé sur une barrière
métallique. Le jeune homme a succombé dimanche à ses blessures.
DES AFFICHES "TUEURS D'ENFANT"
Sa mère a affirmé qu'il avait été accidenté alors qu'il était poursuivi
par des policiers. La police a démenti être à l'origine du décès, expliquant que
des policiers en patrouille avaient seulement dépassé le jeune homme, qui aurait
alors accéléré brutalement et perdu l'équilibre.
"Comment un garçon de 17 ans peut-il finir sur une clôture ? La police a
tué mon fils", a-t-elle dit à une station de radio locale.
Des affiches reproduisant les photographies de trois policiers barrées de
la mention "Tueurs d'enfant" sont apparues sur les murs autour de la gare de
Redfern après la mort de Thomas Hickey.
"The Block", lieu de trafics en tout genre, est un quartier interdit dans
les faits à la population blanche de Sydney. L'entrée ressemble à un check-point
militaire, avec des cubes de béton et des fils barbelés. Il est le théâtre de
fréquents incidents avec la police.
Le Premier ministre de l'Etat de Nouvelle-Galles-du-Sud, Bob Carr, a lancé
un appel au calme. "Il y aura une enquête indépendante sur la mort tragique de
ce jeune homme", a-t-il promis.
Mais le chef de file de l'opposition locale, John Brogden, a réclamé que
le ghetto soit rasé.
La communauté aborigène est la plus défavorisée du pays. Elle présente les
taux les plus élevés de chômage, de violences conjugales, d'emprisonnement,...
L'espérance moyenne de vie de ses membres est de vingt ans inférieure à la
moyenne nationale. "
Source :
Libération, Les dernières dépêches, 16.2.2004,
http://www.liberation.com/page.php?Article=178960
Sur le même sujet,
articles en anglais :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1149197,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1149729,00.html
Sur Redfern / The Block
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1149723,00.html
" Le quartier de Redfern est l'un des points les plus
sensibles de Sydney, où les affrontements avec la police sont fréquents. Lieu de
tous les trafics, le «Block» est un quartier interdit dans les faits à la
population blanche de Sydney.
Ce «lieu de démolition, d'aliénation et de dégradation»,
selon le quotidien The Age, est également «l'épicentre de la culture aborigène».
Les 400 000 Aborigènes représentent moins de 2 % de la population du pays et
forment une communauté largement marginalisée. "
Emeutes après la mort d'un jeune
en Australie : Une
quarantaine de policiers ont été blessés lors d'affrontements avec des
Aborigènes,
Jean-Dominique Merchet, Libération, 17.2.2004,
http://www.liberation.com/page.php?Article=179286
|
