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Sydney police seize knives, brace for beach violence

Posted on: Saturday, 17 December 2005, 20:49 CST

By Jim Regan

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police stepped up security around Sydney's beaches on Sunday, fearing another eruption of racial violence after road-blocks found cars carrying knives, while hate messages circulated by mobile phone.

Police patrolled beaches on horse-back and set up checkpoints around some of the city's favorite summer playgrounds, including Bondi Beach, where the holiday mood was infused by fears of fresh violence between whites and ethnic Lebanese.

"I don't think there will be any trouble today, not with 2,000 cops around," Louise Simpson, a young mother with blonde hair in pig-tails, said beneath a postcard blue sky on Cronulla beach, where the violence first erupted a week ago.

"But what's it going to be like in three or four weeks when the cops go away?" she added as she walked with her husband and daughter along the beach, with mounted police in the background.

Cronulla's mainly white beachside community burst into rioting on December 11 after surfers turned on ethnic Lebanese youth who they blamed for a recent attack on beach life guards.

The unrest revealed tensions between Sydney's territorial surfing sub-culture, united in surfing shorts and wrap-around sunglasses, and ethnic Lebanese youths from poorer western Sydney who have become regular beachgoers.

"We got a text message from our boys to come down today, but we don't want any trouble," said a young ethnic Lebanese man, Ahmad, who wore a camouflage baseball cap backwards and long baggy shorts with a mobile phone clipped to them.

"We just want to meet the surfers," said Ahmad who hails from Punchbowl, a suburb populated by Lebanese immigrants and a world away from wealthier seaside communities of Sydney.

He showed the text message: "All Arabs unite to let the Aussies know we can't be pushed around."

KNUCKLE-DUSTERS

Police deployed another 500 police on Sydney beaches on Sunday, taking the total security cordon to about 2,000, and reiterated warnings for people to stay away from the seaside.

Overnight, four men attacked a 32-year-old man with an iron bar near an east Sydney beach, police said, adding they had seized knives, a hand spear, axe and knuckle-dusters from cars stopped at seaside check-points.

White supremacists have added to the tension, along with racist commentary broadcast on talk-back radio, though no one has been killed or reported seriously injured in the clashes so far.

Many Australians from both sides of Sydney's cultural and racial divide are trying to ease tensions, with the North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club inviting ethnic Lebanese to join its ranks and to help launch a surf boat later on Sunday.

Someone had also written "PEACE" in huge letters made from black electrical tape on the Cronulla sand. Another had scratched "Sorry" along the high-water mark.

In Bondi, normally packed with sun-worshippers a week before Christmas, special forces scoured the shallows in an inflatable boat while police cars prowled the famous promenade.

"Bondi has never been this quiet. It's sad to see such an icon of Australia not being used because it's here for everyone," said Dave Byron, taking part in a Hawaiian-themed barbecue and surfing contest with fellow members of the Bondi Longboard Club.

The club's men wore floral shirts and sipped coffee while the women swayed to Hawaiian music in grass skirts and coconut-shell bras. But even this hedonism disguised a darker reality.

Byron recalled his daughter was one of 88 Australians killed in the 2002 Bali bombing, which brought home fears of Islamist attacks to Australians and exacerbated divisions between white and Muslim communities.

(Additional reporting by Michael Perry)

Source: REUTERS

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