Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria

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Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
Saleema
08/24/01 at 21:22:19
Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
By Kathy Marks

25 August 2001

A black BMW blaring out gangsta rap music screeched to a halt in the main street of Lakemba, the heartland of Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community, and discharged two slickly dressed young men, Mohammed and Moustafa.

The pair, mirror images of each other in sunglasses, leather jackets and heavy gold chains, leant against the bonnet and surveyed the scene as the muezzin called the faithful to prayer at the nearby mosque. "Just watch, the police will be along in a minute," said Mohammed. "Arab boys can't hang round here no more without being harassed."

These, according to the tabloid press, are the mean streets of Sydney, where white women dare not step outside for fear of being gang-raped by marauding Lebanese youths.

The facts tell a different story, but there has been scant regard for the facts of late as public hysteria over the activities of "ethnic gangs" reaches fever pitch and threatens to demolish Australia's reputation as one of the world's most tolerant multicultural societies.

The hysteria has been fuelled by the New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, an otherwise decent Labour politician, and Peter Ryan, the English-born NSW Police Commissioner, another man who should know better than to fan the flames of prejudice.

Lakemba and neighbouring districts certainly have their problems, which include low income, high unemployment and social alienation. There is no question that gangs are active, as in many deprived urban areas. Gangs are believed to run the local heroin trade and are held responsible for a series of stabbings and drive-by shootings in recent years.

At the Sahara Grill, just off Lakemba's main street, Jaafar Benlamih leant over the counter and parted his hair to show me a swelling bruise on his forehead – the result, he said, of his refusal to pay protection money to a local gang. "They wanted A$1,000 (£370) a month," he said, wearily. "They told me to pay up or I'd be in trouble."

Such incidents are grist to the mill of Middle Australia, which has always been ambivalent at best towards the successive waves of postwar immigrants. Particular hostility has been directed at Middle Eastern immigrants, mainly Lebanese who fled the civil war in the 1970s.

Until a month ago, the debate was conducted in relatively civilised terms. Then The Sun-Herald ran a sensational report claiming that "Middle Eastern" gangs motivated by ethnic hatred were systematically abducting and raping young Caucasian women in Bankstown, near Lakemba. At least 70 incidents had been reported in the past two years, it said. During the ensuing outcry, both Mr Carr and Mr Ryan went out of their way to highlight the ethnic origin of the alleged offenders. Another Australian newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, went further, insinuating that misogyny inherent in the Muslim faith predisposed young men to such attacks.

The premier and the police commissioner insisted they were not slandering the entire Australian-Lebanese community, but recent reprisals – including an alleged "revenge" rape of an 18-year-old Muslim girl by a group of white youths – suggest their words had precisely that effect.

Lakemba is now in a state of siege. Sheikh Khalil Chami, an affable, white-bearded man who runs the Islamic Welfare Centre, said: "We have some good people and some bad, like any community. There are 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. Are they all criminals?" At the Lebanese Muslim Association, Keysar Trad listed the reprisals: threatening telephone calls, Muslim women spat at in the street, an attempted abduction, a Muslim schoolboy left with facial fractures after being assaulted during a game of football.

"The community is being demonised," said Mr Trad, assistant to the imam of the mosque, Sheikh Taj El-Din Al Hilaly. "It's like the Spanish Inquisition." Bulletproof glass was installed at Lakemba police station after the building was strafed by semi-automatic gunfire in 1998. Then, too, police blamed a Lebanese gang. There is still a bullet hole in a loudspeaker in the front office. One officer, whose parents migrated from Egypt, said Islam fostered a culture of violence.

The station sergeant, Barry O'Leary, defended the right to use ethnic labels. "If I'm looking for a man of Middle Eastern appearance and all I can see are five Asians and five Aussies, then I know I'm in the wrong place," he says. "It's a basic description. It's not discriminating."

Maybe not, but the likes of Pauline Hanson, the far-right anti-immigration politician, are delighted. As Ms Hanson explained this week: "A lot of these people are Muslims. They have no respect for the Christian way of life." The gang rape story was based on a leak from police, and was subsequently backed up by Commissioner Ryan. Yet mystery surrounds the figure of 70; official crime statistics show there were 10 such rapes in Bankstown last year and four in 1999.

One gang rape is too many, but the statistics show that Bankstown and its Lebanese inhabitants have been vilified without good reason. The area was ranked 94th of 150 NSW districts for sexual assaults in 2000. The incidence of gang rape was far higher in many other districts, in some cases twice as high.

The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research was so concerned by inaccurate reporting that it issued a press release with the relevant data. The Daily Telegraph gave it one short paragraph in a story at the bottom of a page.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/story.jsp?story=90541
Re: Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
Abid
08/24/01 at 23:36:29
Assalam o alaikum

what else do you think that aussies can do... even here in NZ they are regarded as racist.... even they are racist against other whitesmen... like English and Kiwis.

One should also study the australian history and their humanitarian treatment with their aborginal people even today....

Look how they put their illegal immigrants in so-called detention camps, which are more like concentration camps in very bad conditions.

Wassalam
Re: Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
jannah
08/24/01 at 23:38:35
wlm,

My God.. what insanity??? Anyone in Australia who can shed light on this???????
Re: Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
Abid
08/28/01 at 22:28:11
Considering the plight of the hundreds of stranded boat ppl as they are called..... First Australia asked Norwegian vessel to pick them up and now it says that since that vessel picked them up so now the internaional law should apply and either Norway or Indonesia should help them.

.... the most interesting thing to look in this humanitarian problem is the role of the Aussie public who fully support the stance of the government.... though they are themselves immigrants or their children...

:(

Wassalam

http://onenews.nzoom.com/news_detail/0,1227,54817,00.html



Australia was preparing on Wednesday to fly doctors and medical supplies to the Tampa container ship which is stranded in the Indian Ocean with hundreds of unwanted asylum seekers aboard.

The Norwegian-freighter Tampa issued a distress call overnight seeking help for the 434 asylum seekers and four crew it rescued four days ago from a sinking Indonesian boat in international waters.

Australia and Indonesia have flatly refused to accept the freighter and its human cargo despite calls from international aid agencies for compassion.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was not backing down on Wednesday despite the diplomatic standoff but said efforts to get food, water and medical help to the Tampa would be speeded up.

The Tampa is currently anchored off the coast of the isolated Australian outpost Christmas Island, about 350 km south of Indonesia and 1,500 km west of Australia's mainland, where Australian defence personnel are gathering.

"By midday or early afternoon it'll be possible for a helicopter to go the Tampa and land a doctor there with medical supplies," Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

Norway's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that a team of Australian doctors had landed on the ship. It later said the information was incorrect.

Conditions on the Tampa, built to accommodate up to 40 people, were deteriorating with reports that some of the boat people were unconscious and others were suffering from dysentery, fatigue and dehydration after days at sea.

Many of the mainly Afghan asylum seekers have began a hunger strike and threatened to jump overboard it the ship heads back to Indonesia.

Peter Dexter, a spokesman from the Tampa's owner Wallenius Wilhelmsen, said the captain was becoming increasingly concerned about the condition of his passengers and had issued a "pan" call indicating medical attention was needed.

Captain concerned

"The captain's concern is that their condition is deteriorating, which is creating a very trying circumstance for those that are trying to look after them on board," he said. "The (27-man) crew is not equipped in any way to look after 438 people."

Howard said Australia was ready to give the ship humanitarian assistance - but he would not let it come to Australia.

"We will provide food, medical supplies, fresh water, all the things that are necessary to help the people until this matter is resolved," Howard said.

Indonesia has refused to take any responsibility for the aslyum seekers and Norway, the Tampa's sovereign registrars whose laws apply while at sea, has also refused to have anything to do with the matter.

Howard was refusing to soften his stance which was designed to send a warning to the rising number of illegal immigrants arriving in Australia in recent years.

About 5,000 mainly Middle Eastern illegal immigrants arrive in Australia each year - a trickle by international standards - but over the past 11 days, 1,500 people have turned up along the vast coastline with reports another 900 are on their way.

"We are an island continent and we cannot allow a situation to be created where we run the risk of losing control of our borders," Howard said.

"We are trying to make it plain to the rest of the world that we cannot go on indefinitely with the situation we have faced over the past several years. Our capacity to take unauthorised arrivals is at breaking point."

Australians back hard stance on boat people

Australians overwhelmingly back their government's decision to turn away the cargo ship crowded with hundreds of boat people, saying it is time to get tough with illegal immigrants.

Radio talkback shows and the letter pages of newspapers are full of praise for Howard's hardline stance which is expected to be a vote winner for the conservative government ahead of a neck-and-neck year-end election.

"Those boat people are not illegal immigrants, nor refugees, alleged or otherwise. They are pirates, hijackers and thieves," John Thos Brown wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald.

This is a widely voiced view around Australia where there is little compassion for the 434 marooned men, women and children.

Voices of dissent could hardly be heard.

Although Australia is a country built on immigration, resentment has started to simmer in recent years over the increasing numbers of illegal immigrants arriving by the boatload along its coastline, aided by people-smuggling gangs.

Australia accepts about 100,000 new migrants a year with another 12,000 taken in as refugees - but it is the influx of people arriving illegally, then seeking asylum, that angers people.

© Reuters
Re: Middle Australia engulfed in tide of racial hysteria
Kashif
08/29/01 at 02:49:31
assalaamu alaikum

Australia has been in the news for quite a while now. Its been underfire for its tough tough immigration poilcy and one of its main political parties' leader who basically is growing in popularity on a platform of wanting to keep "Australia for the whites."

I spoke to a brother on the weekend who was inAustralia recently and he said that after the news of the Lebanese Muslims having gang-raped a white woman, a sister in hijab was gang-raped by a group of Australians, may Allah give both women patience and strength to carry on with theirlives, and reward th criminals with what they deserve.

Kashif
Wa Salaam
NS


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