2006 speech at Griffith University on understanding the Dec 2005 Cronulla riots

Understanding the conflict and violence in Cronulla

Dynamics and causes

From an Islamic perspective: insight, experiences and suggestions for revised or new policies and practices that may respond effectively and creatively to the Cronulla violence and conflict.

Speech notes prepared and presented by Keysar Trad

Firstly, As a Muslim, when I address an issue such as “Understanding the conflict and violence at Cronulla”, I have to make it clear that we do not condone the conflict or the violence nor the causes for this violence.  We are addressing the issue in order to evaluate mechanisms to prevent the recurrence of such problems.

In addressing the Cronulla violence, we must also address two important factors:

1 – Events leading up to the Cronulla riot and reprisals.

2 – Events leading up to the events that led to the Cronulla riot.

The Islamic faith teaches patience and perseverance and a response based on compassion, as the Qur`an states: “Good deeds and bad deeds are not equal, resist or retaliate with goodness, you will find the person who holds enmity towards you becoming an intimate friend.”  The Noble Qur`an Chapter 41: Verse 34

The relationship between the events and the faith of those involved is one where stereotypes and territorialism dictated the attitude of Anglo beach-goers to their non-Anglo guests.  There was little or no tolerance exercised towards non whites.  Their games of soccer on the sand were seen as a cultural invasion, even though neither Muslims or Middle Eastern Australians invented the game.  Kicking the soccer ball was viewed as kicking sand at people.  Boys making amorous overtures towards girls were viewed with disdain and were subjected to racially derogatory remarks and sometimes to physical harassment to the extent that over a period of time, ethnic youth felt unsafe traveling alone in certain but not all Anglo dominated public spaces, they began to form groups, they would not go to these recreational public spaces without the group, they felt safe within the group and they had company that gave them someone to talk to or to play sport with.  When we look at Cronulla, we have to distinguish it from places like Maroubra where the local beach youths formed a group known as the Bra boys, this group is made up of people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and faith traditions.  Interestingly, it was this group that first reached out to become part of the solution because they were an example where multiculturalism transcended racial tribalism to form a new tribe whose common thread was youth.

Naturally, those who were affronted by the presence of ethnic youth at the beach now felt threatened by the fact that these youth would move as a group and would no longer accept racially derogatory remarks, they would dish out as much as they received.  The dynamic changed from a weak helpless individual to a group that fed off its own power of numbers.  Therefore, whilst the numbers addressed the problem of immediate protection, it created another problem where race-based territorialism was hastily transformed into increased racism and intolerance with people reflecting this intolerance into grievances over real and perceived irritations from the behaviour of the group.  If we are to believe all the reports about the behaviour of some of these groups, we would acknowledge that some of this behaviour was shameful and appalling.  It is interesting how sections of our society generally view groups of youths who gather for anything other than an organized sporting fixture, many of us feel threatened by their exuberance and suspicious of their activities.

The state of events that gave rise to the need for groups to find belonging and safety is just as disconcerting.  For a person to be forced to wait to enjoy recreational public space until there is a group means that this person is denied the same natural rights that others take for granted.  This person should be able to nominate to share in the activities of any group at the beach.  If they see a game of cricket, touch football or soccer being played by some youth, they should not feel left out, they should not be abused if they offer to join. 

However, these acts in themselves were not the causes of the rioting or the violence, these were minor irritations, accumulated, they were not sufficient to turn a society into violent rioting mobs.

The dynamics of the conflict and violence received a volatile mix of fuel from sections of the media.  The rioting and violence on Sunday 11^th did not occur because of the altercation with the lifeguard or the history of territorial animosity between locals and visitors.  These issues were used by sections of the media to wage their own battle against multiculturalism, they played on audience fears in their battle for ratings.  People were literally incited day and night by some irresponsible presenters on talkback radio who continued for a whole week.  As these presenters set the scene, some tabloid journalists followed suit.  It is important to note that this took place in the only eastern state that continues to refuse to catch up with its neighbours or with the times, a state that refuses to give adequate protection from vilification to its constituency.  As this took place, there was no effective political leadership to stem the potential riot before it occurred.  In fact, what we discovered yesterday is that a few days before the riot our prime minister put a message with the media in a time capsule to be published on Monday 20^th February.  This is a new phenomenon from our prime minister that I refer to as time-delayed populism.

Some of the comments on talkback radio have been depicted in the print media and also on the ABC’s Media Watch.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s (One-way radio plays by its own rules, David Marr on 13 December 2005) writes: “Sydney's top-rating breakfast host had heaps of anonymous emails to whip his 2GB listeners on. "Alan, it's not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, it's thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum. It's not a few causing trouble, it's all of them."

“He assured his audience he "understood" why that famous text message went out and he read it right through again on air: "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to North Cronulla to support the leb and wog bashing day …"

“Daily he cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, but he warmed to those who had exactly that on their minds. On Thursday Charlie rang to suggest all junior footballers in the shire gather on the beach to support the lifesavers. "Good stuff, good stuff," said Jones.

“"I tell you who we want to encourage, Charlie, all the Pacific Island people because, you want to know something, they don't take any nonsense. They are proud to be here - all those Samoans and Fijians. They love being here. And they say 'Uh huh, uh huh. You step out of line, look out.' And of course, cowards always run, don't they."

“When John called on Tuesday to recommend vigilante action - "If the police can't do the job, the next tier is us" - Jones did not dissent. "Yeah. Good on you John." And when he offered a maxim his father had picked up in the war - "Shoot one, the rest will run" - Jones roared with laughter. "No, you don't play Queensberry's rules. Good on you, John."”

Media Watch quoted Jones in their episode of Monday 20^th of February 2006:

AJ: John has a good answer, he says that it seems that the police and the council are impotent here. All rhetoric, no action. My suggestion is to invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at Cronulla railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, it would be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs...Australians old and new shouldn’t have to put up with this scum.

— 2GB, Alan Jones, 7th December 2005

Yvonne: We sat down on a picnic blanket and they kept kicking footballs at us.

AJ: Yep, Well Australia is for all Australians. Isn’t it?

Y: Well it is Alan.

AJ: And there is standard that has to apply and if you don’t meet this standard you should be rounded up.

Y: And if we don’t have enough police what’s wrong with getting the army in?

AJ: Uh-ha.

Y: Get these blokes a bit of a rifle butt in the face and they’ll, they’ll back off, they’re cowards!

AJ: Well if it gets to that we might have to do that, you follow what I’m saying?

Y: Get them out to work Alan. I’ve got 2 blooming jobs, what sort of a mug am I? I’m going out to pay the dole for these people who want to blow me up!

AJ: That’s correct, Excellent point. many people feel that way Yvonne, thank you for ringing. Plenty of calls, we’re here to 10 o’clock. We’ll get to them.

— 2GB, Alan Jones, 7th December 2005

The Sydney Morning Herald article of 13 December continued that on the Monday after the riot, the station claimed that “the majority of their callers supported what happened.”

They did because they were whipped up into a frenzied mob, they got drunk and they were out for blood bearing the memory of what they were exposed to all week.  People came from everywhere to participate in this “Leb and Wog bashing day.”

The comments of some of these shock jocks caused a crowd to descend on the beach from all over the state of NSW, some walked in with racist slogans written on their flesh, some on placards, some even wrote these slogans on the sand of the beach.

There was excessive consumption of alcohol that was readily available from local vendors and the abuse of mobile phone technology to broadcast SMS messages to hundreds of people; the rest is history.

At the other end of this, the marginalized youth sat watching on their television screens, they saw the racist slogans and the violent race-based attacks.  Every push and shove, every act of discrimination previously experienced by the viewers were flashing before their eyes, a small minority of viewers rushed to gather on the beach, prevented by police from going to Cronulla, they vented their anger at cars parked in the streets of another beach suburb.

The next day, the infamous SMS messages reached Middle Eastern Australians.  Your suburbs are being invaded, your buildings are going to be burnt down, your places of worship, yes, those places that you do not attend but know that they are there.  They turned out in numbers; they found no threat so some of them became the threat as they struggled to deal with SMS technology whipping up their fears.  Along with the SMS came the faceless voices in the crowd, inciting retaliation.

Some, refusing to listen to community leaders went and committed criminal offences the tit for the tat of the day before because the political leadership was found wanting in addressing this problem.  We witnessed the prime minister and federal opposition leader in a state of denial despite the racist graffiti, the racist slogans and chants, they could not see the racism because it was too overwhelming.  As the federal politicians contradicted the state politicians and went into denial, the real instigators were still broadcasting in their protected studios, unreachable, un-prosecutable, untouchable.  It is in this setting that some Middle Eastern Australian youths lashed back appallingly and criminally.  Most of the youths involved in the reprisal attacks have been arrested, the instigators of the violence though continue to this day, unabated, they have little to fear knowing fully well that the bodies that are set up to monitor them are slow to act and lack the power to be as effective as they should be.

There must be little doubt that the racist riots and reprisals that took place in Cronulla are most unlikely to occur in other states.  This is because other states around Australia accord a little more protection to religious and ethnic groups through law.  It is most heartening to see in Queensland for example, the anti-discrimination commissioner Susan Booth writing in celebration of multiculturalism (Courier Mail 14 February 2006).  What does it mean to celebrate multiculturalism?  In reality, such celebrations are about shaping attitudes, they do nothing to change the dominant culture, they do not threaten it in any way, rather, they enrich it.  For a nation that enacted legislation to treat incitement to violence against any section of its society as a terrorism related crime, ours refuses to do anything in the face of clear evidence pointing at those who incited the violence that we saw.  We need to empower the policing mechanisms and make them more proactive if we wish to avoid a repeat of Cronulla.  It is not enough for us to have an ABA or an ACMA that handles complaints, seeing articles like the Sydney Morning Herald’s that I referred to earlier and seeing the Media Watch report should by themselves provide reasons for ACMA to act rather than forcing effected groups to go through a complicated system of complaints and be disparaged by rules that do not even bind the ABA to publish their reasons if they decide that the broadcaster did not breach the code.  We need to empower our anti-discrimination bodies so that they can act rather than put complaints against popular radio presenters in the too hard basket.  We need politicians to show more leadership on these issues, to make forthright statements condemning racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia rather than fuelling them and manipulating them as a popular distraction.  And if we wish to go a little further and dare to tackle the other forgotten riots of Kempsey, Macquarie Fields and Redfern (all in NSW), we need to lobby for a fair-go for our youths.  Our youths today are left with far less resources, facilities and opportunities than they were a generation ago.  Our society has some serious issues to address, these issues are not about whether Multiculturalism needs to be reviewed, they are more about resourcing in the public interest rather than public opinion.

Keysar Trad

Islamic Friendship Association of Australia