Australia Seeks to Prevent More Race Riots
By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press WriterTue Dec 13,10:32 PM ET
Authorities seeking to prevent more racial unrest in Sydney were keeping a close watch on places of worship, as Prime Minister John Howard acknowledged Wednesday this week's riots may have harmed Australia's image abroad.
Police were investigating whether an early morning fire at a Protestant church in Sydney was related to the rioting that gripped the city's beachside suburbs Sunday and Monday. Another church in the neighborhood, which has a large Middle Eastern population, had its windows smashed overnight.
"Incidents like this don't play well around the world," Howard said on the sidelines of an East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
But he added the violence should primarily be seen as an issue of law and order.
"What happened was a group of people broke the law," he said. "We have to primarily see these things as breaches of the law and they should be dealt with firmly in that context."
The violence erupted Sunday when more than 5,000 white Australians fought with police and attacked people they believed to be Arab immigrants at Cronulla beach in southern Sydney. The mob was angered over reports that youths of Lebanese descent beat two lifeguards at the beach a week earlier. That attack's motive was unclear.
On Monday night, youths of Middle Eastern appearance retaliated for the Cronulla rioting in several Sydney suburbs, smashing store fronts and attacking parked cars.
Forty people were hurt and 27 were arrested in two days of violence.
Calm returned to Sydney on Tuesday, though Arab immigrants were allegedly assaulted by whites in two other cities.
Police were investigating new mobile text messages similar to those that helped lead to the rioting on Cronulla beach, said New South Wales Police Minister Carl Scully. He said many of the text messages were hoaxes "but some of them, we think, have credibility and we need to be aware that there is a risk of incidents continuing."
He promised "a huge police presence across Sydney on Saturday and Sunday," warning authorities were expecting trouble.
Morris Iemma, the leader of New South Wales state, said "special attention will be paid to places of worship, our churches and our schools."
Racial tensions in Australia have been rising in recent years, largely because of anti-Muslim sentiment fueled by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the October 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
They also were heightened by a gang rape case in 2002 in which prosecutors and witnesses said members of a Lebanese gang hurled racial abuse at their rape victims, all of whom were white.
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Associated Press Writer Christopher Bodeen in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this story.
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