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Police given power to "lockdown" parts of Sydney

Posted on: Thursday, 15 December 2005, 00:30 CST

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An emergency sitting of parliament passed special laws on Thursday allowing Sydney police to "lockdown" parts of Australia's biggest city to stop racial unrest. After two nights of racial violence in Sydney's beachside suburbs this week, the New South Wales (NSW) state parliament also increased the penalty for rioting from 10 to 15 years and doubled the sentence for affray to 10 years.

"Louts and criminals have effectively declared war on our society and we are not going to let them undermine our way of life," Morris Iemma, NSW state premier, told the emergency sitting of parliament in Sydney.

Police were also given power to ban alcohol.

Sydney's racial violence erupted at Cronulla last Sunday when some 3,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked people of Middle East appearance, saying they were defending their beach from Lebanese youth gangs. Police said white supremacists incited violence at Cronulla.

Lebanese and Muslim youths retaliated with two nights of violence in several different beachside suburbs.

For the past two nights Sydney has been calm, with more than 450 police patrolling streets and erecting roadblocks to check drivers moving into areas of previous unrest.

Racist mobile telephone text messages and emails continue to circulate calling for violence this Sunday, despite calls from leaders of surfing and Arab-Muslim communities for calm.

NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney urged people on Thursday to ensure Sydney remained peaceful and to bring the spirit of Christmas back to the city.

"The spirit of Christmas has simply disappeared out of this city," he told reporters. "It is up to all of us, not only the police, but people of goodwill, to bring the spirit of Christmas back into this city."

Moroney said an extra 1,000 police would be on duty on Saturday and an extra 1,500 on Sunday to prevent violence.

He said police were ready to immediately use their new powers, which also allows them to stop and search people and vehicles and seize vehicles and mobile telephones.

But Moroney urged people to go about their normal end-of-year activities this weekend, including going to the beach.

"There's no restriction on going to the beach," he said.

"There are certainly legal restrictions if you are going to engage in unlawful conduct, riotous behavior, assault malicious damage or whatever the case may be."

Source: REUTERS

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