Time to face facts (Sydney race riots)

The Australian ^ | 25th January 2006

[naturalman1975]

NSW has a law and order problem with ethnic gangs

MORRIS Iemma's unforced errors following last month's Cronulla riot, and the violence that followed, are doing his Government a great deal of damage. Even worse, they are confirming what many in Sydney suspect – that the police, either due to orders or ineptitude, cannot or will not, confront ethnic crime in the suburbs. It is hard to imagine how the NSW Premier could have made more of a mess of the situation. Certainly he talked tough in the immediate aftermath of the riot and empowered police to effectively ban ordinary Sydney citizens from going for a surf. Certainly, some of the thugs who were most prominent in the riot against Australians of Middle Eastern ancestry at Cronulla are under arrest. But Mr Iemma and his advisers have seemed less inclined to deal with revenge attacks by gangs made up of young men who live in Sydney but see Australians of any other ethnicity as their own as the enemy. First we heard there was not enough evidence to detect and arrest men of Middle Eastern appearance who had run riot in the days after Cronulla. Then we heard that police had been ordered not to intervene to break up a mob assembling at a mosque.

It was enough for Opposition Leader Peter Debnam to suggest Mr Iemma was soft on ethnic crime because he dared not offend Sydney's Labor-leaning Lebanese community. And just as Mr Iemma was drawing breath to denounce Mr Debnam and deny his claims, we learned yesterday that police had no less than 100 hours of surveillance tapes, some of which showed reprisals following the Cronulla riots. And – what a surprise! – the arrests of people involved in such attacks started shortly after. This is not good enough. Mr Iemma is crippling his own credibility by allowing it to look as if the police pursue crime selectively. And in the process he does the cause of multiculturalism a good deal of harm.

Comfortable media commentators, people the Premier does not appear to want to offend, accuse ordinary Australians of racism for pointing out that gangs organised according to ethnicity are involved in everything from car theft to sexual assault. But there is no point in denying there are ethnic gangs when criminals guilty of pack rape make a point of celebrating their ethnicity while committing their crimes. For Mr Iemma to play to the Labor left by ignoring the problem will only drive people away from his party towards populists who will play the race card. There is a name for this phenomenon – One Nation – and nobody needs a second bite of that blight. The irony is that Sydney is perhaps the most successfully multicultural city in the world. The ethnic gangs that are causing so much distress consist of a tiny group of young men who are utterly unrepresentative of Australians whose origins are in the Middle East and whose faith is Islam. Mr Iemma and his allies need to admit that this is a law and order problem, nothing more, nothing less. And stop pussyfooting around in solving it.

[Mordacious]

The ethnic gangs that are causing so much distress consist of a tiny group of young men who are utterly unrepresentative of Australians whose origins are in the Middle East and whose faith is Islam.

Way to work the PC.

[Fred Nerks]

Lebanese Muslim thugs spark riots and the media blame “racist” Australians (snipped)

Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 19 December 2005

Leftwing journalists are writing sob stories about how badly Australians are allegedly treating Muslims. Yet Lebanese Muslim goons have been terrorizing locals for years without a peep from these leftwing bigots who call themselves journalists.

‘Report’ after ‘report’ on the Cronulla riots stressed Australian racists as being the problem. When it came to fingering Lebanese Muslim thugs the same journalists omitted the thuggery and described this scum as “being of Middle Eastern appearance. This lie was a shabby attempt to reinforce their despicable view that Australians are basically racist...

http://www.brookesnews.com/051912muslim_print.html

[Fred Nerks]

ooooh look! thousands of racist Australian thugs go on rampage at Cronulla...

[TheCrusader]

"And in the process he does the cause of multiculturalism a good deal of harm."

Multiculturalism, that strange phenomenon where nations try to live divided because their pride says they can.

[yankeedame]

When it came to fingering Lebanese Muslim thugs the same journalists omitted the thuggery and described this scum as “being of Middle Eastern appearance.

Well, OTOH, at least they don't insist on calling them "Asian" like the BBC.

[Fred Nerks]

"Asian" like the BBC.

Well, they don't want to descriminate against a religion, (cult) so what's left (pun) but to be racist, hmmm?

[RedMonqey]

"Well, OTOH, at least they don't insist on calling them "Asian" like the BBC."



Uh, they ARE "Asian"

That's where the "Middle Eastern" (of Asia)derives from.

[ccmay]

The ethnic gangs that are causing so much distress consist of a tiny group of young men who are utterly unrepresentative of Australians whose origins are in the Middle East and whose faith is Islam.

Complete rubbish. Muslims are like this always and everywhere.

-ccm

[Buffettfan]

These reporters are all self loathing guilty white liberals that think that by attacking other whites that they themselves cannot possible be racist.

[newfarm4000n]

Complete rubbish. Muslims are like this always and everywhere.

-ccm

I disagree. The muslims in American custody in Gitmo are mostly well behaved !