Racial violence in Australia
Nevertheless, incidents and examples of violence between the various ethnicities of modern Australia have continued to be attributed to racial motivations up to the present time.
Hate crimes and racial violence are not new concepts[1] Australia's recorded history begins with the arrival of the British First Fleet at Sydney in 1788.
Skirmishes and battles between early European settlers and indigenous Australians which occurred during this period may not all be classified as "racially motivated" violence however, given that they were very often punitive or defensive attacks by one side or other engaged in a drawn out competition for land, resources and sites of cultural significance.
Racism often played a role in this violence, though competition for land and resources and cultural misunderstandings over differing views of such concepts as sacred spaces and property ownership were also common motivators.
By 1788, Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aborigines come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact, both violent and friendly: a 1644 account of Willem Jansz's 1606 landing at Cape York (the first known landing by a European in Australia) refers to "savage, cruel black barbarians who slew some of our sailors", while the English buccaneer William Dampier wrote of the "natives of New Holland" as "barbarous savages", but by the time of Captain James Cook and First Fleet marine Watkin Tench (the era of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), accounts of Aborigines were more sympathetic and romantic: "these people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than ... we Europeans", wrote Cook in his journal on 23 August 1770.
[7] The first Governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, was instructed explicitly to establish friendship and good relations with the Aborigines and interactions between the early newcomers and the ancient landowners varied considerably throughout the colonial period—from the mutual curiosity displayed by the early interlocutors of Sydney, to the outright hostility of Pemulwuy and Windradyne of the Sydney region,[8] and Yagan around Perth.
Pemulwuy was accused of the first killing of a white settler in 1790, and Windradyne resisted early British expansion beyond the Blue Mountains.
[9] According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, in Australia during the colonial period: "In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings.
[10] Relatively small numbers of White settlers and convicts removed Aboriginal populations from much of South Eastern Australia.
[11] The island of Tasmania's small, though culturally unique, Aboriginal population in particular suffered – the majority of them succumbing to introduced disease, being killed in conflict with white settlers, or dying early as a result of displacement or competition for resources in the decades following European settlement.
The most infamous riot occurred on the night of 30 June 1861 when a group of perhaps 3,000 drove the Chinese off Lambing Flat, and then moved on to the Back Creek diggings, destroying tents and looting possessions.
[13] The rioting had stopped by the next day, but the disgruntled locals tried to organise to eject Southern European migrant workers from the mines.
On Sunday, 4 December 2005, police were called to North Cronulla Beach following a report of an assault on two off-duty surf lifesavers by members of a group of men of Middle Eastern appearance.
On Sunday, 11 December 2005, approximately 5000 people gathered to protest against alleged incidents of assaults and intimidatory behaviour by groups of Middle Eastern looking youths from the suburbs of South Western Sydney.
Revenge attacks by Middle Eastern men against white Australias occurred in various suburbs, including a stabbing of a man at Woolooware, [25] a man being attacked by an iron bar while in his car,[26] gunshots being fired at parked cars at Christian church services and a church hall in Auburn in the city's west was burned down.
There were 120,913 Indian students enrolled to undertake an Australian qualification in 2009 and India was the second top-source country for Australia's international education industry.
[34] In Sydney, around 150 – 200 Indian men gathered to protest against police inaction about attacks on them by Lebanese Australian Youths in Harris Park, in the city's west.
Groups of Lebanese youths from the area also attended the scene resulting in some clashes, though police presence stopped further affray.
[38] Some mainstream media outlets publish racialised opinion pieces that unfairly portray groups in a negative light.
[39] Sydney talkback radio commentator Alan Jones was found by a New South Wales State Government Tribunal to have "incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims", describing them as "vermin" who "rape and pillage a nation that's taken them in", in the lead-up to the 2005 Cronulla race riots.
