Riot fear casts grim shadow over Australia Day
The memory of race rioting cast a shadow over Australia Day celebrations today as hundreds of extra police patrolled beaches to prevent possible fresh flare-ups.
The Australia Day holiday, which commemorates the arrival in 1788 of the first British settlers in what is now Sydney Harbour, was marked by parties and ceremonies at which hundreds of immigrants were granted Australian citizenship.
Festivities began early with a ceremony by Aboriginal dancers in a Sydney park.
But Sydney authorities also sent 1,200 extra police officers to patrol beaches hit by riots in December amid reports that a protest was planned by a far-right group on North Cronulla Beach, epicentre of a December 11 race riot.
The riot involved thousands of white Australians attacking several people of Middle Eastern appearance to protest at the beating a week earlier of two volunteer lifeguards by a gang of men identified as Lebanese.
Youths of Middle Eastern appearance then went on two nights of retaliatory attacks on white Australians, smashing shop windows and vandalising cars.
The violence shocked many in Sydney, a city of four million that has long prided itself on being a harmonious multicultural melting pot.
New South Wales state police Assistant Commissioner Mark Goodwin said the extra officers sent a clear message to potential rioters.
“It’s very stern warning to any persons that intend to come out and cause any troubles or any of the racial tension at Cronulla, Maroubra and any other places that we’ve seen in the past month that we are out there,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
About seven members of the Australia First far-right group handed out leaflets condemning multiculturalism in Australia at Cronulla beach before police moved them on. There were no arrests and no violence, an Associated Press photographer said.
In a speech yesterday, prime minister John Howard appealed for calm among Australians of all ethnic backgrounds.
“Australians, whatever their background, deserve to be treated with tolerance and with respect,” he told the National Press Club in the capital, Canberra.
“Racial intolerance is incompatible with the kind of society we are and want to be.”
Australian researchers at Davis station in Antarctica, nearly 2,500 miles south of the mainland, celebrated the day by playing cricket and taking a dip in icy waters.
“No one stays in for too long,” station leader John Rich said.
