Extremism addressed, racism left to fester

Five months after last year's Cronulla riots ASIO continues investigations into extremist involvement in the violence.

Meanwhile everyday racism remains a problem in the Beach side suburb.

Director General of Australian Security Intelligence organization (ASIO), Paul O'Sullivan, announced last week that investigations into extremists involved in the violence which shook Sydney's beaches in December 2005 was still in progress, as ASIO considered these groups to be a "threat to Australian Security".

The display of overt racism at Cronulla beach on the 11th of December 2005 seemed a comfortable climate for members of the independent division of the Australia First Party, the Patriotic Youth League (PYL).

The youth face of the Australian extreme right, crept out from an underworld of poster campaigns, secret meetings, and cryptic websites onto the Cronulla streets and saw their agenda making the headlines.

Resembling many residents that day, the PYL were between the ages 13 to 26, wrapped in the Australian flag and identifiable only by t-shirts which sported the message:

"Your teachers are Lying to you, multiculturallism is anti-Australian"

The anti racist website http://www.fightdemback.com claims the PYL have been "heavily mentored" by Australian First representative and convicted criminal, Dr Jim Saleam(pictured left), who said the race based attacks on beach goers at Cronulla, including women "could not be condemned".

The PYL website claims December 11th was a valuable recruitment day and Dr Saleam claimed "From our point of view it was a rampaging success"

Dr Saleam said he had hoped to spread ideas at Cronulla such as "There is no such thing as a Muslim-Australian"

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock did not think extremists were to blame for the violence.

"There are groups of that character-- they're not large -- and in relation to what happened in Cronulla, clearly they were not, as I understand it, the instigators or the organizers of it," he said.

Following the riots NSW Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, emphasized the role of the community in preventing young men from being drawn into groups with radical beliefs.

A Cronulla resident on the ABC documentary Riot And Revenge on Wednesday, March 15, denied that external right wing groups, like PYL hijacked their cause but rather had a "right to be there".

Dr Kevin Dunn, a Geographer from the University of New South Wales, who recently completed a study on racism faced by Muslim-Australians http://www.bees.unsw.edu.au/school/staff/Dunn/racism.html said:

"I would stress that I think that it is ordinary intolerance that is a bigger potential problem than the extremists"

Within the Cronulla area development of "cross-cultural initiatives that generate positive contact are an important component of the anti-racism mix" said Dr Dunn.

Government funding was awarded to the Sutherland Shire Council and Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) to promote social cohesion in the area, five months on these projects are still in the planning stages.

The head of Communications at SLSA, Sean O'Connell said this week "we hope to change the face of surf life saving but these things take time, there won't be anything visible for a couple of months, we are still in the recruitment stages"

This week in Cronulla pub and backdrop to much of the violence at the end of last year, Northies, there was a show of aggression toward Islamic boxer, Anthony Mundine, explained by Cronulla resident, Paul as "cos they don't want him to win cos he is Muslim and Muslims don't fit into out culture".