More background to the Australian riot

Goes to show motivation. From The Australian, an article entitled "Racism is repulsive, but so is self-loathing":

YESTERDAY a colleague emailed me from New York. The young lawyer - her family lives in Brighton-Le-Sands, a bayside suburb north of Cronulla in Sydney - wrote: "While I agree there is no justifying excuse for the violence and breakdown in order that occurred at Cronulla, it needs to be put in context. Unless you live in an area like Cronulla, Brighton-Le-Sands or Bondi, you have no idea what it is like to have one's suburb regularly inundated with large groups of young Muslim men from the western suburbs who proceed to shoot people [as has happened in Brighton], intimidate people, regularly threaten people within their vicinity with violence, drive around in large groups screaming abuse at people from cars with their music blaring, regularly brawling, etc."

This young woman recounted that all of the girls in her family (except the youngest) have been "subject to harassment inflicted by groups of these men - comments on our appearances, racist comments on our Australian background, unwanted touching, being followed while walking home by groups of men in cars (I was once followed all the way home - have never been so scared in my life), sexually explicit remarks while alone, with friends or with boyfriends, unwanted called-out invitations to have sex with groups of them, etc".

And from the BBC:

Jason Lalor lives minutes from the beach and is pessimistic that there is a quick fix to the deeply rooted antagonism on both sides.

He says he has been harassed by groups of Lebanese youths on more than one occasion and says he is tired of being hassled in his own neighbourhood.

"It's not going to stop one day. It's going to keep going, which is what it's been doing since my father's time."

Henrik