The following statement was issued by the socialist youth organisation Resistance on December 13 in response to the racist attacks in Cronulla on December 11.
In response to the weekend's events in Cronulla, PM John Howard has attempted to deny the existence of "underlying racism" in Australia. Instead, Howard has tried to explain the events as nothing more than a question of law and order, saying, "violence, thuggery, loutish behaviour, smashing peoples' property, intimidating people — all of those things are breaches of the law and I don't think the actions should be given some kind of special status because they occur against the background of this or that".
The "background" against which these events have occurred is exactly what Howard is trying to draw attention away from. The background is the government's incitement of anti-Muslim racism as a means to justify the latest "anti-terror" legislation and Australia's continued participation in the occupation of Iraq. Similarly, the Howard government has continued to whip up anti-Muslim racism in order to maintain support for the mandatory detention and deportation of refugees.
The perpetuation of such racism by the media has become particularly apparent in recent days. Describing the march in Cronulla of 5000 "locals" carrying Australian flags and chanting racist slogans, the Daily Telegraph wrote that what "may have begun as a show of pride" ended in alcohol-fuelled violence. It was at this demonstration that Muslim women had their headscarves torn off and a neo-Nazi group held placards bearing slogans including "Aussies fighting back". Yet from talk-back radio to broadsheet newspapers, the events have been characterised as racial or mob violence where the fault is on both sides, obscuring the source of the racism.
In response to the blatantly racist media portrayal of an "army of Muslim youth" targeting "innocent residents" we need to be clear that the actions of young people of Middle Eastern background are primarily a response to ongoing racism and discrimination rather than the source of the so-called "racial conflict". And in response to calls for increased policing of Muslim communities we need to be clear that it is such discriminatory over-policing and intimidation that is fuelling frustrations.
The vilification of the Muslim community by the government and the media has legitimised overt racism and created the space for racist demonstrations such as that seen in Cronulla on Sunday. This is made worse by the absence of a real opposition to the government's racist policies, epitomised by the Labor Party's support for the anti-terror laws, allowing them to be passed last week.
As previous experience has shown, the most effective way to combat racism is by uniting the broadest forces in action. This was seen in the high-school student walkouts against Pauline Hanson in 1998 and community protests against the attacks on Sudanese refugees in Newcastle earlier this year.
Resistance condemns the Howard government's incitement of anti-Muslim racism that has fuelled the events in Sydney. We call on the government to repeal all "anti-terror laws", stop the scapegoating of Muslims and withdraw Australian troops from Iraq immediately.
In the context of the Howard government's recent attacks on workers and unions it is more important than ever to be united. We are committed to uniting with those being victimised and persecuted in the name of the "war on terror" and by the Howard government's racist policies.
[To find out more about Resistance, contact your nearest branch (details on page 2) or visit <http://www.resistance.org.au>.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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