Report Faults Media, Police For Australian Race Riots

Taken from Yahoo News, 19.10.06

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's worst ever race riots were partly fuelled by media and allowed to spin out of control by an inadequate police response to the build-up of tensions, a police report has said.

The findings were part of a half-finished report released by New South Wales Police on the Cronulla riots in which white mobs attacked Lebanese-Australians in order to "reclaim the beach" last December.

Retired assistant police commissioner Norm Hazzard found evidence of racism and bias by local residents of Cronulla as well as of violent criminality by some Middle Eastern youths, the report showed.

But it also said that the risk assessment and planning by police ahead of the December 11 riot was flawed and inadequate and that the simmering tensions were heightened by talk-back radio shows.

"The review concluded that the risk assessment to indicate the necessary level of response was flawed," said the incomplete report, which was released by police under pressure from local politicians.

It noted that more than 270,000 text messages promoting racially motivated violence were sent in the lead-up to the riot, giving police time to prepare for possible trouble.

Instead only 47 riot-trained officers, with a further 52 on stand-by, were deployed to Cronulla on December 11, the report noted.

"Subsequently, the planning for the event was not adequate and some specialist resources that could have assisted in the management of the operation were not deployed," the report said.

Media, particularly talk-back radio, were also blamed for allegedly whipping up emotions in the week leading up to the riot, prompting Hazzard to urge media to use "caution" when reporting on issues that "may lead to civil unrest".

"The Cronulla riots clearly reaffirm the influence the media has in setting community mood," the report found.

The riots marked the climax of months of growing tensions between Cronulla residents and people of Middle Eastern descent, most of them Lebanese, visiting Cronulla beach from other areas of Sydney.

The violence was sparked by an attack on two Cronulla beach lifeguards - who are iconic Australian figures -- allegedly by a group of ethnic-Lebanese men.

The unprecedented violence in Cronulla led to retaliatory attacks in which churches, shops and cars were trashed, prompting widespread debate about the extent of latent racism in this multi-ethnic nation.