2005 Cronulla riots

Background New South Wales Police had been recording racial and ethnic tensions and incidents in and around Cronulla since October 2005. There is also a history of conflict between Cronulla locals and visiting beachgoers from the western suburbs ("Westies") with "bashings" (physical assault) common since the 1960s as part of a turf war between Westies and local surfers. There remains a great deal of debate as to whether previous racially charged attacks in the area like the Sydney gang rapes contributed to the tensions, or if the subsequent trials were used as justification for the attacks, despite many reporting otherwise. The previous summer on Australia Day (26 January 2005), a non-racial riot occurred with around 2,000 to 3,000 young people in the Cronulla area engaged in "civil disobedience", at one stage hurling missiles at police attempting to control the crowd. A verbal exchange had taken place after three lifesavers approached a group of four young Australian men with a Lebanese background on Cronulla Beach, with both groups accusing the other of staring at them. One of the Australian Lebanese men reportedly responded to the accusations, "I'm allowed to; now fuck off and leave our beach", to which a lifesaver responded, "I come down here out of my own spare time to save you cunts from drowning". The verbal exchange escalated with one Australian Lebanese youth attempting to defuse the situation. Another Australian Lebanese youth then threw a punch, missing, prompting a pushing match that escalated into a fight. One of the lifesavers was badly hurt after falling and striking his head. Media reporting One media report stated that there was already tension between the community and Australian Lebanese youths before this event and people, particularly women, claimed to have been harassed, almost daily, by "groups of young Lebanese men" attempting to "pick them up" and describing the women as being "Aussie sluts". When a listener identified as "Berta" commented to shock jock Alan Jones of Sydney's 2GB Radio that she had heard "really derogatory remarks" aimed at Middle Eastern people, Jones interrupted stating "We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in Western Sydney". After the riots, Jones was found to have breached the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Code of Conduct section 1.3(a), as his comments were "likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity". Police were concerned about the repercussions of these events. Later investigations revealed that over 270,000 individual SMS text messages were transmitted inciting a racially motivated confrontation at North Cronulla Beach the following Saturday. However at 12:59, a young man of "Middle Eastern appearance" was spotted on the beach and the crowds began "chanting stuff [and] yelling out things" before rushing him. The man attempted to avoid the crowd by quickly entering "Northies", a local pub, but the crowd forcibly dragged him out and attacked him. The police, having been in Cronulla since the early morning (including police helicopters and patrol boats), quickly intervened and resolved the situation. At 13:30, two women verbally argued with a small group; the police arrived and both parties left. However, an hour later, they again met and a scuffle ensued. At 13:45, another two boys from Bangladesh At 15:20, two separate assaults took place; one involved a crowd attacking a man of "Middle Eastern appearance" and throwing beer bottles. A local of Maroubra reported that each of the cars that arrived was "full, you know, had four passengers". The convoy was reportedly armed with bars and bats, knives, machetes and guns. The group assaulted several people, knocking one unconscious and threatening another with rape, and damaged between 60 and 100 cars, setting at least one on fire in Arden Street, Coogee. Residents reported that in some streets "every car" had had their windows smashed, with glass covering the streets. Police also confiscated 40 iron bars and arrested 14 people. At approximately 22:25, a 26-year-old mechanic Dan Gray was stabbed in the back three times and twice in the thigh with a blade. The incident occurred outside Woolooware golf club when two cars carrying a group of males "described as being of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance" approached the man and his friends. Dan and his friends attempted to flee from the group, who were shouting "Get the Aussie dogs... get the Aussie sluts". Dan was knocked to the ground and was repeatedly kicked in the head. The attack ended when the knife snapped off in the victim's back. A man named Jake Schofield was attacked by a group of four men of "Middle Eastern appearance", who beat him repeatedly, stabbing him twice and hitting him with a piece of concrete before stealing his wallet and keys. The attack left him with a fractured eye socket and nose. All four assailants were arrested and charged. A woman wearing a headscarf had her car stopped by a group of white males and was then abused and threatened by this group. ==Aftermath==

Additional smaller riots occurred on the following nights in the suburbs of Maroubra, Brighton-le-Sands and Cronulla. On 12 December, rioters had written various messages including; "Aussi to Die", "Intifada", "It's war", "Sunday cowards die, Soldiers rize", "Never rest assie dog", "We came in planes yous came by chains u convict dogs", and "We fear no ozy pigs" before continuing to destroy cars and local shops. Approximately 2000 people gathered inside Lakemba Mosque with another 800 gathered outside the evening after the riot. Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman spoke to the crowd and called for calm. An additional seven people were injured including another police officer. A husband and wife were taken to hospital after the wife was struck in the head and the husband tried to defend her, and another man was struck by a baseball bat and suffered a fractured forearm. ==Groups involved in the riots==

The far-right political party known as the Australia First Party claimed that 120 members and supporters attended the riots, and both members of the AFP and their youth wing, the Patriotic Youth League, were seen handing out anti-immigration leaflets and supplying alcohol there. The now defunct Patriotic Youth League also played a part by distributing white power leaflets in the days prior to the riots, and held banners saying "Aussies fighting back" during the riots. ==Criminal prosecutions==

By 19 July 2006, police had laid 285 charges against 104 people, 51 having been arrested as a result of the original Cronulla riot and 53 arrested from the retaliation riots. These persons were charged with, amongst other things: malicious damage, possession or use of a prohibited weapon, assaulting police, rioting, resisting arrest, threatening violence and affray. Osman was the only person charged over the initial confrontation. Magistrate Jacqueline Trad (herself of Lebanese descent) told Sutherland Local Court that Osman had turned his back on his real country: "By this sort of conduct you turned your back on your family, your culture and your real country, all for the sake of some juvenile, impulsive and misplaced allegiance.... Over the last 100 years or so, the ancestors of many citizens – mine included – came to this country seeking refuge from hatred, intolerance, violence or just simply the opportunity to improve their families' prospects." • Yahya Jamal Serhan was arrested over the stabbing of "Dan" on 12 December and charged with affray and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to 13 months jail but was immediately released after having already spent nine months in custody awaiting trial. Dan was angered and disappointed by the sentence, saying "I've got no feeling on the left hand side of my back where the knife broke off." • Marcus Kapitza, 28, was jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to one charge of riot. On the day of the riot Kapitza wore a singlet with the words "Mohammed was a camel-raping faggot". He was also involved in the attack at the Cronulla train station shouting "Fuck off! Fuck off the Lebs". • Brent Lohman, 19, was also charged over the Cronulla train station assault, and was sentenced to 11 months in jail. • Two of the youths who attacked Jake Schofield turned themselves in to police and were charged with armed robbery, wounding, malicious wounding with intent, affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. • Brett Andrew King appeared in court in January 2006 charged with sending two text messages 42 times for a retaliatory riot on 18 December 2005. • A 16-year-old Lebanese immigrant, Ali Ammar, was arrested and jailed for seven months for stealing and burning an Australian flag from the Brighton-le-Sands Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) club. Following his release, Ammar appeared on television to present an official apology and in 2007 he was sponsored by the RSL to walk the Kokoda Track after the State President of the New South Wales RSL met him at a Reconciliation Conference. Strike Force Enoggera Strike Force Enoggera was established on 13 December 2005, tasked with investigating the riots. The strike force initially consisted of 28 members under the command of Superintendent Dennis Bray, but was increased to 100 officers on 20 January 2006. During a radio interview, New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney claimed to have no video footage of the retaliatory attacks on 11 December; however it was later revealed that the police had had a video for five weeks, leading Moroney to sack Bray, who was later reinstated to a lesser role, having been replaced by Detective Superintendent Ken Mckay. ==Responses==

Media and community responses Brian Wilshire, a 2GB radio host, stated the following weekend on air, "Many of them have parents who are first cousins whose parents are first cousins, the result of this inbreeding — the result of which is uneducationable people... and very low IQ", comments for which he later apologised. During a press conference along with the Comanchero MC (which has a large number of Middle Eastern members), an apology from the Maroubra "Bra Boys" was also issued to leaders of the Islamic community. Apologies from several others involved were also issued to Sydney's Lebanese community, though the earlier "protest" part of the day was still defended. Writing a year after the riots, novelist Hsu-Ming Teo of Macquarie University was worried that Australian multiculturalism was being eroded, Lawrence said the All of Us project was wholly inspired by the Cronulla riots. "You watch this stuff on TV and you wonder why people are doing this – this is no way for a multicultural society to behave", said Lawrence. including: the ability to seize cars and mobile phones for up to seven days, close licensed premises and prohibit bringing alcohol into lockdown zones. and condemned the rioters. He also called on the community leaders to use "their influence to get the hot heads to cool it". saying that "I saw, in my 40 years of police service, some of the most disgraceful behaviour and conduct by adults that I'd ever seen." New South Wales Opposition leader Peter Debnam called it "a real disgrace" and called for a tougher police response. but denied any racial undertones, saying the events were primarily an issue of law and order Federal opposition leader Kim Beazley described the attacks as "simply criminal behaviour, that's all there is to it". Economic impacts Many of the small businesses in and around Terrigal on the New South Wales Central Coast (two hours north of Cronulla) reported that a police lockdown of the beach caused business to drop to 10% of normal levels on a Saturday, with only 25% of Christmas shopping crowds turning up on the Sunday. Tourism and hospitality workers in the area were laid off or had their hours cut. The New South Wales state government announced a A$250,000 tourism campaign after authorities in Great Britain, Canada and Indonesia issued travel warnings to their citizens. == Later decades ==

Tenth anniversary The Party for Freedom (PFF) planned to mark the tenth anniversary of the events with a rally on Saturday, 12 December 2015. In place of the rally a "halal-free" barbecue, attended by about 50, was held on Don Lucas Reserve near Wanda Beach. A heavy police presence included the riot squad, mounted police and helicopter, and the two groups were mostly kept apart. Two anti-racism protesters were arrested. Twenty years later The Bondi shooting exacerbated older ethnic and religious tensions in the community. In the immediate aftermath of the attack there was a threat of escalating violence with incitement circulated online focused on Cronulla, a beach near Bondi that was the epicentre of a previous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim race riot in 2005. In response to this, public assemblies were prohibited across the entire Sydney metro area for 14 days. The targets of the calls for violent retaliation were the "Middle Eastern" and broader locally-described "wog" ethnic groups, referring to Lebanese Australians and other Eastern Mediterranean ethnic groups, the target of the previous mob violence. The previous race riots, 20 years earlier, were triggered by local violent crimes committed by individual Lebanese Australian men in Sydney, in the context of tensions already heightened by terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002 targeting Australian tourists, and the September 11 attacks in 2001. A 20-year-old man appeared in court on charges of "using a carriage service to menace, harass, offend, and publicly threaten violence on grounds of race or religion", for attempting to incite retaliatory mob violence in response to the Bondi shooting. He was denied bail. ==Film==

The 2016 film Down Under is set in the aftermath of the riots. ==See also==