A year on, Cronulla has changed but rift remains: [1 All-round Country Edition]
John Stapleton, Tracy Ong, Additional reporting: Dan Box. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 09 Dec 2006: 7.
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Abstract
[Nick Pavlous] was at Cronulla that day, and saw gangs of white men attacking ethnic groups on the beach. He believes the riots brought into the open racism that already existed and which is yet to be resolved. “I don’t think anything has changed,” he says. “I just think it’s more obvious there is racism in society, and I don’t reckon it’s going to stop.”
[Wessam Amir] was training this week at a not-for-profit gym set up by young community leader Fadi Rahman, who says the Cronulla riots highlighted the need for thegym.
Peter Remfrey, secretary of the NSW Police Association, says the events at Cronulla had a strong impact on the officers who dealt with the riots and their aftermath.
Full Text
ONE year on from the racial violence that shocked the nation, Sydney’s Cronulla beach is a changed place.
There is no police intelligence suggesting trouble on the anniversary of the riots, but the dog squad, water, traffic and mounted police and riot officers on dune buggies will all be keeping an eye on the beach today.
Footage of drunken white mobs bashing Lebanese that day drew international condemnation. Equally confronting were the revenge attacks — carloads of youths travelling from areas with Islamic communities in western and southwestern Sydney and wreaking havoc on the coast.
Today one man remains in jail, charged with rioting, while others have served sentences of up to nine months.
After the furore that followed the clashes, claiming the scalp of NSW police minister Carl Scully, both sides say the violence has driven a divide between thetwo communities that is yet to heal.
For many involved, the riots changed their lives.
Aleyce Rodriguez, a 17-year-old of Spanish-Lebanese descent, was sitting on the beachfront with friends a few days before the riots when a white man walked past, hurling racist abuse. She says her friends attacked the man in retaliation.
“You get less Lebanese on the beaches here now. There used to be the Hurstville boys, the Arncliffe boys, they all used to come down, and now there is no one,” she says.
Nick Pavlous, 17, says planning for the violence started well ahead of the riots.
“Weeks before, I was at the park and some Australian blokes came up and said, `Are you coming to the Cronulla riots, to support your country?’ I said I wasn’t interested.”
But Nick was at Cronulla that day, and saw gangs of white men attacking ethnic groups on the beach. He believes the riots brought into the open racism that already existed and which is yet to be resolved. “I don’t think anything has changed,” he says. “I just think it’s more obvious there is racism in society, and I don’t reckon it’s going to stop.”
Following the riots, Wessam Amir, 22, was one of the crowd to go to Lakemba in western Sydney to defend the mosque. A devout Muslim, he says that if someone attacks his way of life, “I’ll trash them right back”.
“When I started seeing the shit they were saying about our people and our prophets, I was really angry. I’m not saying it’s still as bad as it was, but it’s always going to be in the back of your head.”
Amir was training this week at a not-for-profit gym set up by young community leader Fadi Rahman, who says the Cronulla riots highlighted the need for thegym.
“It’s been very difficult,” Rahman says. “We feel we are not included. We have been alienated and sidelined by the wider community. That makes it harder to reach people.”
Peter Remfrey, secretary of the NSW Police Association, says the events at Cronulla had a strong impact on the officers who dealt with the riots and their aftermath.
“Cronulla was unprecedented and imposed on our officers a whole enlarged area of policing we previously didn’t have,” Remfrey says. “We think it’s inevitable there will be further public order incidents.”