Americans wary of immigrants: Gallup poll

NEW JERSEY, DEC 16: More Americans are wary of foreigners now than they were prior to Sept 11, a Gallup poll suggests.

However, Asia and Africa are comparatively welcoming of immigrants, but Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America make it difficult for foreigners to settle.

In the U.S., the most favored destination of migrants, 51 percent said yes to immigrants, and while 44 percent said no. But the proportion of those hostile to foreigners has shot up since a Gallup poll in June 2001, right before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in which 62 percent said they were for and only 31 percent against.

There are presently 35.2 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. � about 12.1 percent of the population, pushing the percentage of the U.S. population born in other countries to the highest point in nearly 100 years, according to Center for Immigration Studies.

Among French people made wary by recent immigrant riots, 50 percent said they would not welcome immigrants, while only 30 percent would, according to Gallup.

Amid recent racial turmoil in France and Australia and rising concern about immigrants worldwide, Gallup International conducted a survey of 55,000 people in 70 countries to mark the UN's proclamation of Dec. 18 as International Migrant�s Day. It found a global tendency to be wary of outsiders, as some 47 percent of respondents did not want foreigners to immigrate to their countries, while 43 percent did.

However, a substantial majority in Africa (63 percent), Asia (56 percent), and North America (54 percent) felt positively about immigration, while the majority in the Middle East (67 percent), Eastern Europe (61 percent), and Central and South America (53 percent), and some 50 percent in Western Europe were against immigrants.

The countries statistically most favorable to foreign influx were Israel and the Philippines (87 percent), Malaysia (80 percent), Nigeria (76 percent), and Canada (74 percent). The least welcoming was Turkey (7 percent), followed by Bulgaria (10 percent), and countries created after ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia, Serbia-Montenegro (10 percent) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (12 percent). In Korea, 57 percent favored foreign immigrants and 23 percent did not, which is about average for Asian countries.

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EU police bust biggest ever illegal immigration ring targeting UK

PARIS, Dec 15: European police have broken up the biggest-ever illegal immigration ring targeting Britain by arresting dozens of suspects believed to have helped smuggle "thousands" of people into that country, French and Italian authorities said Thursday.

The raids were carried out in Britain, France, Greece, Italy and Turkey on Wednesday with Interpol and Europol coordination after a three-year investigation, a French official told AFP.

Italian police put the number of people apprehended at 90. French authorities said the illegal immigrants came from Afghanistan, Iraq and, to a lesser extent, from Pakistan, Somalia and Ethiopia.

SMS fuels Aussie race riots

NEW JERSEY, DEC 15: TEXT messages and emails that fuelled Sydney's race riots have surfaced in three other Australian states including New Zealand, but authorities believe they are hoaxes, reports Sydney Morning Herald.

Text messages were used to incite mob violence against people of Middle Eastern appearance at Sydney's Cronulla beach on Sunday in retaliation for an earlier attack on surf lifesavers.

Further text messages and emails have been circulating in Sydney this week, calling for groups to gather at Cronulla and other beaches this weekend. Sydney is in the southeastern state of New South Wales (NSW).

Police in Queensland, which is the northern state bordering NSW, said text messages calling for people to start "cracking skulls" had surfaced on the Gold Coast. Similar messages were reported yesterday in Victoria and Western Australia, reports SMH.

Gold Coast is the southern most part of Queensland bordering the state of New South Wales. Sydney and Canberra are the two major cities of NSW.

Australian newspaper The Standard also reported an email aimed at sparking racial violence in Sydney has spread to south-west Victoria.

One email emanating from NSW and doing the rounds in Victoria reads in part: "For we are the Sons and Daughters of the ANZACs, the men who protected us from invasion and threats in years gone by.

"Now it is your turn, OUR turn. The guard has changed, the times have changed, but true patriots shall never be silenced."

The email also says: "Failure to fight and win will mean living under the rule of criminals and gang rapists . . . Bring yourself, your mates, anyone you know of fighting age and whatever devices you see fit to defend yourself and your country."

In Melbourne, biggest city of the southern state of Victoria, police have heightened security around mosques and other Muslim establishments in the wake of Sydney's violence.

Melbourne is the biggest city of Victoria state, and famous for its cricket test-series and matches.

The Islamic Council of Victoria told ABC Australia it is concerned about copycat behavior, after phone messages apparently linked to Sydney's race riots were circulated around Melbourne.

The council is urging people to ignore the text messages that promote race riots.

The Council's Waleed Ali says Melbourne is not immune from the type of trouble that has happened in Sydney, but cultural and geographic factors reduce the chance.

"Certainly not as easy in Melbourne as it was in Sydney to get the kind of numbers together," he said.

QUEENSLAND state Premier Peter Beattie reportedly dismissed the racist text message campaign in his state as a hoax, but said he is not taking any chances about Sydney's ethnic violence spreading north, reported AAP.

"The police are investigating but our view is that it's a hoax.

The email criticized the Government on its immigration laws and urged ``Australian brothers and sisters'' they should fight like Anzacs rather than die like cowards.

Western Australia Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan confirmed two text messages had turned up in that state.

Police believe messages encouraging violence in Victoria, Western Australia, NSW and New Zealand may be hoaxes.

Meanwhile, community leaders are calling for a youth curfew in a bid to stop expected racial violence in Sydney this weekend.

Text messages inciting racial hatred and calling people to a pitched battle in the southern Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla are circulating widely.

Meanwhile, an e-mail has called on the "sons of the ANZACs" to march on the south-western Sydney Muslim enclave of Lakemba.

Community leaders have responded by saying Lebanese youths should not venture out after 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and should stay home all Sunday, according to reports.

"Those who violate the curfew will be doing so in defiance of their faith, of the law and their community leaders. We are all united in opposing violence," Lebanese Muslim Association leader Ahmad Kamaledine was quoted as saying in The Australian newspaper.

Anglican archbishop Peter Jensen backed the move and called on parents to exert discipline on their boys and young men.

"It is first of all in the home that we learn to respect and care for others," he said to The Australian.

Other religious and political leaders are calling for unity and calm after a spate of attacks on places of worship linked to days of race-fuelled violence.

Meanwhile, a leaked document has indicated police were not equipped to respond to Monday's violence in Cronulla, reports NineMSN.

The Seven Network said it had obtained a police incident report instructing officers to stay away from one of the trouble spots � believed to be Punchbowl Park in Sydney's west � on Monday night.

The park is believed to have been the meeting place for scores of men who formed a vehicle convoy which drove to Cronulla unimpeded by police.

The report showed those in the crowd were suspected of being Middle Eastern criminals who had been involved in malicious damage and civil disobedience offences throughout the Sutherland Shire.

The report said "a direction was given to police about midnight not to enter the area and antagonize these persons".

(DesPardes News Monitor)

Australia prepares for more racial violence

NEW JERSEY, DEC 14: Mobile telephone text and e-mail messages calling for racial violence in four Australian states circulated on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

More than 450 police took to the streets in Australia's largest city Sydney, for a second night on Wednesday, erecting roadblocks to check drivers moving into areas of previous unrest, such as Cronulla Beach in the south.

Sydney's racial violence erupted at Cronulla last Sunday when some 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants, attacked people of Middle East appearance, saying they were defending their beach from Lebanese youth gangs. Police said white supremacists incited violence at Cronulla.

Meanwhile, the burning to the ground of a church hall on Tuesday night, smashing of church windows and shots fired at a Catholic school prompted authorities on Wednesday to say they would focus on places of worship to ensure they were safe from violence, reports Reuters.

Sydney Police said they were investigating text messages inciting racial violence in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.

Some messages called for racial violence next Sunday, police said. Text messages were used to incite mob violence in Cronulla last weekend.

E-mail received by Reuters from an unknown source appeared to call on migrants to riot at Bondi beach at the weekend and read: "Time to show these people stuck in the 1950's that times have changed. We are the new Australia."

In a counter campaign, Lebanese and surfer gangs held "peace talks" at Maroubra Beach in Sydney on Wednesday and agreed to start a text message campaign calling for calm.

Similar "peace talks" between Muslim leaders and surfers will be held at Cronulla Beach on Wednesday night.

Muslim women's groups urged a voluntary curfew on Arabic youths, calling for parents to keep their children home this Friday and Saturday night and all day Sunday. They urged parents to confiscate mobile telephones and car keys.

"I urge community leaders to continue dialogue in an effort to defuse the aggression," said Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Goodwin.

NSW Police Minister Carl Scully said police were preparing for more unrest this weekend.

"We expect further problems. We had more than 400 cops (police) last night. Expect hundreds on top of that on Saturday and Sunday," he said.

(DesPardes News Monitor)

`Sadly...We Are a Racist Society�

NEW JERSEY, DEC 13: Authorities moved to crack down on rioters after three days of racial unrest in Sydney's beachside suburbs, while people of Middle Eastern descent were allegedly assaulted by whites in two other cities amid concerns the violence could spread, reported AP quoting police sources Tuesday.

Sydney has a large community of Lebanese who mostly live in a cluster of lower-income neighborhoods close to the city's Olympic sports complex. New South Wales state's Gov. Marie Bashir - who holds a largely ceremonial role as local representative of Britain's monarch - comes from a Lebanese family, says an AP news report.

In the 2001 census, nearly a quarter of Australia's 20 million people said they were born overseas. The country has about 300,000 Muslims, most in lower income suburbs of large cities.

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 deadly bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in October 2002.

They also were heightened by a gang rape case in 2002 in which Bilal Skaf, an Arab-Australian, allegedly a ring leader of a Lebanese gang was sentenced to 55 years, an unusually severe sentence for the country. Prosecutors and witnesses said members of the gang hurled racial abuse at their rape victims, all of whom were white.

"The rapes have had a significant impact in terms of race relations in Sydney," said professor Chris Culleen, director of the Institute of Criminology at Sydney University, to AP.

On Monday, Sydney police said they discovered weapons including firebombs and rocks on the roofs of some houses in the beachside suburb of Maroubra. Some of those arrested were armed with machetes and baseball bats.

Elsewhere, Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio reported Tuesday that a family of Middle Eastern origin was attacked the night before in the western city of Perth by a group of 11 white men, who threw eggs, shouted abuse and kicked their garage door.

In Adelaide, a taxi driver of Lebanese origin, Hossein Kazemi, was injured Tuesday when he was punched by a passenger. Police said there was an argument over the fare, but the victim was taunted about the riots in Sydney because he was of Lebanese origin.

And on the Gold Coast in Queensland state, text messages targeting ethnic groups have called for people to attend a demonstration on Sunday and to start "cracking skulls," Australian Associated Press reported.

According to one Op-Ed, the anti-terrorism law passed last week will allow racist hate speech anywhere in Australia to be prosecuted as sedition, leading to seven years' imprisonment, even though racial violence may have nothing at all to do with sedition or terrorism, writed Ben Saul.

Writing for Sydney Morning Herald - an influential Australian newspaper, Saul says that the author of the text message, which inflamed racial tensions last week committed sedition by writing: "This Sunday every f---ing Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day."

Also seditious is this retaliatory text: "all arabs unite the aussies will feel the full force of the arabs as one/brothers in arms unite now/let's show them whos boss/destroy everything."

According to Ben, the intent of the messages is clear: to urge one racial or national group to use violence against another

Ben Saul is a law lecturer at the University of NSW.

Reuters reported quoting Australian media that mobile telephone text messages from Australians of Anglo-Saxon and Middle East backgrounds were both calling for revenge attacks to continue.

Islamic youth leader Fadi Abdul Rahman said further trouble could be brewing as Muslim youths were angry, believing police were not treating them fairly.

"They feel they have been dealt with by the authorities differently to the way Anglos have been dealt with," he said.

"They feel injustice and they feel angry about it."

Meanwhile, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, noting the nation has successfully absorbed millions of foreigners, has denounced the racial violence and called for calm.

Mr Howard described the violence as "sickening" but insisted it was not evidence of the deep-seated racism that some allege permeates Australian society.

"I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country," Howard said after the skirmishes Sunday. "I have always taken a more optimistic view of the character of the Australian people."

But some politicians laid the blame squarely on racism.

"We are just getting a sample of what happened in France a few months ago," said Labor opposition politician Harry Quick, according to Reuters.

"Sadly if you scratch Australians we are a racist society, it is only in the last 40-odd years that we have got rid of the White Australia (immigration) policy," Quick told television.

"We have reached a pressure cooker stage here. People of ethnic minority in Australia are just taking things into their own hands."

The Sydney racial unrest recalled three weeks of rioting in France that began in the suburbs of Paris on Oct. 27 and spread nationwide, baring frustration in communities with high immigrant and Muslim populations.

(DesPardes News Monitor)