Culture War on the Beaches

It'

s a drizzly Tuesday night, and six armed police are manning a checkpoint on one of the main access roads into seaside Cronulla, in Sydney's south. It works like this: an officer waves approaching cars to the side of the road, where an expressionless colleague with a torch takes over: "Hi. How are you? Where are you going?" There's a brief exchange, a license checked, whereupon the driver's either waved on or turned back. Nearly everyone is good-humored–some are clearly pleased to see the police out in force. But the officers are on edge: "We don't know what's going to happen," says one. "There've been messages going around that another mob is on the way."

Checkpoints. Mobs. Lately, Sydneysiders have been grappling with scenes that few ever imagined would occur in their city. Though they're arguing about when the trouble started brewing and why, there can be no doubt when it erupted. On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 11, a crowd of some 5,000 people - overwhelmingly young men - gathered near Cronulla beach. Most had responded either to a mass-circulated text message that called on "Aussies" to reclaim their beaches from "wogs" and "Lebs," or to enthusiastic publicizing of the event by tabloid media. Among the less offensive slogans scrawled on bare chests or emblazoned on T shirts were wog-free zone and ethnic cleansing unit. For several hours, police stood by as testosterone-charged participants sang, chanted, waved Australian flags and drank alcohol. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, the mood of hundreds of protesters darkened. Eyes wild, they chased and caught passers-by of Middle Eastern appearance, attacking them with fists, feet and bottles. Outnumbered, burly police spread their feet and swung their batons. Among the 13 injured were five policemen; even ambulance officers felt threatened. "I'm ashamed as a man and as the (New South Wales) Commissioner of Police," said Ken Moroney. "Never have I seen a mob turn like they did today."

Retaliation came just hours later, as hundreds of youths of Middle Eastern descent took to the streets with baseball bats and other weapons to wreak havoc and ignite fear in neighboring suburbs. Mainly, they smashed shop windows and car windscreens, though a 23-year-old man was stabbed, while another was beaten up while taking out the garbage. Last week, young men set alight or otherwise attacked several churches in south-western Sydney. Arrests reached the dozens, but the violence abated as police numbers swelled in trouble spots and community leaders pleaded for calm. Still, with new text messages rallying support for fresh protests circulating on both sides, fears are high for more outbreaks of a strain of violence both foreign and repugnant to most Australians.

The catalyst for the Dec. 11 gathering was an attack a week earlier on two Cronulla lifeguards by a group of men of Middle Eastern appearance. But local resentment about the behavior of men fitting this description goes back much further. Everyone from surfers to lawyers tells the same story. Lured by the beach from nearby suburbs, these youths are notorious for harassing the local girls. If they're not insulting them, they're hitting on them, sitting uninvited on the girls' towels, following them in the street and refusing to be deterred. "My daughters are always having trouble with them," says a middle-aged father. "They call the girls 'skippy sluts.' These boys don't drink and they don't play sport, so they don't fit in. They're frustrated, so they come here and pick fights."

Many Sydneysiders believe that, for whatever reason - and many suspect a perverse form of political correctness is at work - police haven't cracked down on this behavior as they should have. Commissioner Moroney appeared to sympathize with this view: until it exploded into vigilantism, he said, the protest was legitimate. Recent high-profile rape cases involving Lebanese-Australian perpetrators and memories of the Bali bombings - many of whose victims hailed from the city's southern suburbs - may also have inflamed passions in Cronulla, though locals maintain that at least 80% of the rioters were from elsewhere.

Australians at both ends of the political spectrum interpreted the violence through their own prism. For many on the right, it was more evidence that multiculturalism doesn't work - not with Muslims, anyway. For others, on the left, the Dec. 11 riot could be sheeted home to what they see as the federal government's demonization of Middle Eastern people, beginning with the "Tampa" election campaign of 2001 and continuing with its spirited defense of the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, Australia's participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and draconian antiterrorism legislation. These people scoffed at Prime Minister John Howard's statement that the riot didn't expose racist sentiments among white Australians. In the middle are millions of citizens horrified by the hatred they've seen in the eyes of young countrymen since Dec. 11. Many have blamed the media for helping to incite the violence - a charge for which there's plenty of evidence in the form of aggressive talkback-radio transcripts. A fear is that the rioters of Dec. 11 may have started something that no one will be able to finish. "Look at this text message," says 19-year-old Muslim Noah Issa, who works as a security guard in Cronulla. "Wake up, wake up, oh lions of Lebanon," it begins, before calling for more retaliation and the extermination of the "enemy." Having hitherto sounded reasonable, Issa hears the message as a war cry: "This makes me wild." Teenaged Lebanese Australians have an identity crisis as they try to reconcile two cultures, says a Muslim community leader. "I have heard one of the imams gave a speech condemning the support of sport," he says. "Another was against women wearing perfume. This is not helping. People are becoming confused."

The N.S.W. government's response has been swift. An emergency sitting of parliament on Dec. 15 passed new laws that will allow police to lock down suburbs and close bars in the event of disorder; a presumption of bail was removed for those charged with affray, and maximum sentences were increased. Police and community leaders have called on parents to impose curfews on their children and to urge tolerance and respect for the law. Meanwhile, never before have so many hoped for the reemergence of an oft-maligned quality: good old Australian apathy.