Racial Violence Continues in Australia
December 12, 2005, 9:22 AM EST
SYDNEY, Australia (AP)
Young people riding in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney late Monday, a day after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia’s worst outbursts of racial violence.
Sunday’s attack—apparently prompted by reports that Lebanese youths had assaulted two lifeguards—sparked retaliation by young men of Arab descent in several Sydney suburbs, fighting with police and smashing 40 cars with sticks and bats, police said. Thirty-one people were injured and 16 were arrested in hours of violence.
The rampage on Monday broke out in Cronulla, the same coastal suburb where the violence began, and in neighboring Carringbah, said Paul Bugden, spokesman for New South Wales police. Calm was restored by early Tuesday. Bugden said six people were arrested and one person apparently was hit by a rock in Monday’s violence. He did not have descriptions of those involved in the rampage, but he said it “obviously stems from the last 24-48 hours.”
Australian Associated Press, citing a resident who declined to be named, said men riding in up to 50 cars and wielding baseball bats converged on Cronulla, smashing cars. Ambulances were called to help at least one injured man seen lying on the side of the road. Steven Dawson said a bottle thrown through his apartment window in the suburb of Brighton-Le-Sands showered his 5-month-old son Caleb with glass, but did not hurt the child.
Horst Dreizner said a car had rammed into his denture store and he feared the violence would escalate. “Personally, I think it is only the beginning,” he said in a telephone interview. Elsewhere, about 300 people of Arab descent demonstrated against Sunday’s attack outside one of Sydney’s largest mosques, amid tight security.
The riots began Sunday after rumors circulated that youths of Lebanese descent were responsible for an attack last weekend on two lifeguards at Cronulla Beach. Police said the assault was not believed to be racially motivated. Police, meanwhile, formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the attack, some of whom were believed to be from white supremacist groups. Police said they were also seeking an Arab man who allegedly stabbed a white man in the back.
** Ship them out back to the middle east....read more on this story here
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