Australian police locked down two Sydney suburbs on Sunday night, allowing only residents through roadblocks, fearing fresh outbreaks of racial violence after seizing Molotov cocktails.
Police said Australia’s famous Bondi Beach and the suburb of Brighton-le-Sands near Sydney airport had been sealed off after people were arrested carrying Molotov cocktails.
“Only residents can come into Bondi. They have to show proof of residence, like a driver’s license,” a police spokeswoman told Reuters.
Some 2,000 police patrolled Sydney’s beachside suburbs on Sunday, screening cars at dozens of roadblocks, seizing knives, clubs spiked with nails, steel pikes, knuckle-dusters and bottles of gas.
Police said they had found five people north of Cronulla on Sunday with a 5-and-a-half gallon drum of gas in their car, as well as condoms for making Molotov cocktails. They also found two men with bottles of petrol on a Bondi bus.
Police said the men arrested with Molotov cocktails were not local residents.
“We will continue this operation for as long as it takes,” New South Wales state police commissioner Ken Moroney told reporters, adding that 60 arrests had been made since Friday.
The southern beach of Cronulla, a mainly white beachside community, burst into rioting on Dec. 11 when a large crowd stirred on by white supremacists, and fueled with alcohol, turned on anyone of Middle East descent.
Two nights of attacks
The angry crowd said they were defending their beach from ethnic Lebanese youth whom they blamed for a recent attack on beach life guards.
Lebanese youths retaliated over two nights, attacking people and vandalizing cars in several suburbs.
The unrest revealed tensions between Sydney’s territorial surfing sub-culture, united in surfing shorts and wrap-around sunglasses, and ethnic Lebanese youths in rap attire from poorer western Sydney who have become regular beachgoers.
Police on Friday issued an unprecedented warning for people to stay away from beaches in three cities — Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong — saying they had intelligence people were planning racial violence this weekend.
Police patrolled beaches on horseback all day on Sunday and set up checkpoints at city beaches, where a peaceful holiday mood was edged by fears of fresh violence.
“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, at Cronulla Beach.
“All Arabs unite to let the Aussies know we can’t be pushed around,” read the text message on Ahmad’s mobile phone.
In Bondi, normally packed a week before Christmas, police prowled the beach and the water.
“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 barbecue and surfing contest.
White supremacists have added to the tension, though no one has been killed or reported seriously injured in clashes so far.
Rekindling stereotypes
The violence has hurt Australia’s image, rekindling old stereotypes of white Australians as racist, opposition Leader Kim Beazley said. “We are not a racist country,” he told local media.
In central Sydney, almost 2,000 people held a “United Against Racism” rally. Some blamed Australian involvement in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq for a growing divide between whites and Muslims.
“I have lived here for a long time but now I feel very terrified and scared to walk down the street,” said Sahar Dib, 44, wearing a headscarf.
She and thousands of other Lebanese fled to Australia in the 1970s when civil war broke out in Lebanon.
