For my less than 2 handfuls of international readers, the Cronulla Riots may be largely unknown, so to that end, a recap is after the jump.
In 2005, a series of smaller incidents of violence between white Australians and local middle eastern, mainly Lebanese, Australians, flared up into a series of major riots centred in Cronulla, a beach-side suburb of Sydney in New South Wales.
Violence had been building for a while, with many minor stoushes between Australians of middle eastern origin and white Australians. White Australians claimed to be infuriated by 'gangs of Lebos' harassing locals and insulting women, calling them 'sluts', while the various middle eastern beach-goers, claimed that young racist hoons kept giving them grief.
Like my mum always said, it takes two to start a fight, so I don't think it's possible to pick anyone who was 'in the right' at this stage.
Still, right wing talkback radio veteran Alan Jones weighed in to the debate, and began reporting a series of heinous crimes, purportedly committed by the Lebanese community in and around Sutherland Shire. His tone was as incendiary as ever, and eventually led to a call for all 'true blue' (read: white) Australians to get down to Cronulla and take back the beach for 'true Australians'.
I'm not a big fan of violence in most forms. I always find myself asking about the Cronulla Riots if there was another approach that could have been taken to avoid the ensuing riot. When the hallucinatory brew of patriotism, xenophobia and egging on by the media is ingested however, well... perhaps the result was unavoidable.
In any event, Alan Jones was later found guilty of breaking an Australian media Code of Conduct regulation, by making comments “likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity”. Which is exactly what happened.
On Sunday 11 December 2005, around 5000 people had gathered at the beach, doing what all Aussies - regardless of origin - like doing at the beach. Namely, swimming, hanging out with friends, having barbecues, building sandcastles etc. The main difference was the sheer number of Australian flags being waved around, certainly more than you'd ever see on any given Australia Day public holiday. There was also the many and various 'Lebs Out' slogans written on t-shirts and the like.
The feces hit the proverbial overhead air distributor, when after midday, a young man of middle eastern origin was spotted on the beach. Crowds went apeshit, and promptly started hurling abuse, before chasing the guy down, dragging him out of a pub, and kicking the ever-loving crap out of him.
The dam had burst. Violence escalated rapidly and other attacks popped up in around the Shire like spot fires. Around 2000 middle eastern Australians sheltered in Lakemba Mosque. While some inside called for calm, some outside flourished guns before the all-too-willing-to-be-gorecrows media.
Once the many riots had started to be broken, or had wound down or be dispersed, a very few arrests and charges were laid. Here at least there seemed to be a little equality, as agitants on both sides were prosecuted.
Cronulla was a turning point in Australia. Leading up to Cronulla, the rise of racist political parties like One Nation, had caused serious divisions in public debate. The aiding and abetting by reckless shock jocks like Alan Jones didn't help either. Post-Cronulla, Australia has become more Islamophobic and more racist. Any chance we may have had of reaching out to some communities and seeking some kind of harmonious accord is gone, perhaps forever. Since then, Australia has become acutely sensitive to any middle eastern or Islamic dissent, even when - all too frequently - that dissent is from strictly a minority viewpoint, not taken seriously by the broader middle eastern/Islamic community.
It's taken a lot of work to try and heal the scars created by Cronulla, maybe that wound will never be fully healed. What were a series of crimes committed by thugs on both sides - crimes that cannot be excused in the slightest - became blown up into a grand-scale race riot. The riots did not distinguish. To the immigrants and children of immigrants on one side, all Aussies were scumbag racists. To the white Australians on the other side, anyone non-caucasian was fair game, so among others a Bangladeshi man was attacked and beaten, and a church of predominantly Tongan parishioners was also attacked.
The only lesson all Australians - regardless of where you're from - can learn from this is to be nice to your neighbours. Being an arsehole is not native to a particular ethnicity. Being Lebanese or a bleach-blonde Aussie makes no difference. Maybe if both communities had worked together to end the internecine violence, there wouldn't have been a riot. Maybe it would have failed anyway. We'll probably never know now.
All I do know is that if we hadn't had an Alan Jones whipping people up into a frenzy in his best 'Lead Villager With Pitchfork Chasing Frankenstein's Monster' impression, the whole disaster might not have been so bad.
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