By Jenny Long
SYDNEY — On the afternoon of Sunday, October 17, 30,000 people attended the annual Arabic Festival at Gough Whitlam Park, in Tempe, a southern suburb. The festival was described by the organisers, the Australian Arabic Welfare Council, as a great success. Late in the day however, conflict occurred between police and some festival-goers that resulted in a barrage of racist media commentary. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly spoke to a festival participant and the organisers.
Nicola Joseph, a radio producer for the ABC's Radio National, arrived at the carnival at about 4.15 p.m.
"I noticed that there were one or two police cars coming down the hill with their sirens on. People who were leaving the carnival explained that there had been a couple of girls fighting. One of the girls had been put into a paddy wagon and basically everything was fairly quiet.
"A small crowd, maybe a few hundred, had gathered just to watch what was happening." There had been a fight between two girls, and one of them had been arrested. "The police then went to check out some action over the hill and someone let the girl out [of the paddy wagon] and she ran for it ... The police chased her when they realised what had happened and the crowd got all excited and a lot ran down the road after the police just to see what would happen ... Probably 99% of the crowd were just spectators, that's all they were doing."
Joseph thought the situation became worse when realised "that they had been followed by at least a few hundred people and got quite afraid and started calling in reinforcements. For about 20 minutes onwards from that point there was continual sirens and police arriving and that was when the [police] dogs arrived. There was a helicopter circling the whole time above people. Meanwhile the carnival was still going on ... but the more police sirens, the more people came across to see what was happening ...
"Observing the police, I felt that they really didn't demonstrate any kind of skills in dealing with cross-cultural situations. They had a kind of glazed look in their eyes. I couldn't help thinking that images of demonstrations in Iraq were coming into their heads and that they were really fearful of this unknown entity of Muslim women and a lot of people not speaking English. You had a real sense that they were really scared in the situation."
Joseph returned to the carnival with his small daughter. "I noticed this wall of people running back towards the main part of the carnival. I just grabbed by daughter, as it was like a stampede of thousands of people. I didn't realise what they were running from but as soon as they passed me I found that I had a police dog on my feet. There were a hundred police running into the crowd, the front ones with dogs and they were just letting the dogs near anyone ...
"Kids were screaming, women were really upset and a lot of women were speaking in Arabic. The cops just didn't seem to be able to handle that, and they had no interpreters."
It was late in the day, and people who were trying to leave the carnival were being chased back in. "What [the police] had effectively done was attract the attention of thousands of people who were still dancing and having a good time, so that the crowd even grew larger.
"There was resentment at the fact that kind of force had been used against people who hadn't done much more than heckle a bit and stand around and watch what was happening. We are talking about a very young crowd; most of them would have been teenagers although there were a lot of parents who were really trying to take over and talk to the police ...
"There were a few cans thrown from the back of the crowd at the police. There was also a bit of chanting as people really did start feeling really resentful of the force that was used. At one stage the police grabbed some women, and a man who was obviously related to one woman tried to pull the police off her. The police were pretty unhappy about that and were really battling into him in a way that just seemed so outrageous."
Joseph also commented on the media representation of events. "When I got home that night to my parents' place, they were there at the door, absolutely hysterical thinking that we'd been caught in some mass riot. It's really interesting to look at the language that's been used to describe it, like frenzy, riot.
"This kind of language and police reportage reminded me a little bit of a Richard Carlton report when he went to Iraq. That kind of coverage is really not unconnected. I really do feel that the police and most of the non-Arab Australian population have an image of Arabs as being the kind of people that when they get into a group don't think logically, beat their breasts and chant and are committed to ideals that people in the West just have no connection with whatever.
"I think there's a general feeling that Arabs tend to be led by dictators and have unquestioning beliefs in the people that run their countries. We are presented as somehow stupid and it was echoes of that that the media really indulged in ...
"There were a few shots of women with hejabs [scarves] and there were about two or three isolated incidents that involved Arab people physically coming in contact with police that were cut together in such a way that it looked like there was a frenzy. It's really easy to manipulate images of Arabs in the same way that they manipulate images of Aboriginal people in the media."
Joseph is also concerned "that no-one has really addressed the apparent problem in the way that police are dealing with young Arabic kids. Possibly the closest thing I've seen to it is the problem that exists between young Aboriginal people and cops. The police are poorly equipped to deal with cross-cultural situations, and I guess the really shocking thing is that in 1993 you'd think they'd be more culturally sensitive."
Mervat Rebehy of the Australian Arabic Welfare Council commented that the media gave the wrong impression that 30,000 people were involved in the events. As a result of the coverage there was now a great deal of distress within the Arabic community at the setback in building relations with the wider community. She explained that the event had been going for 10 years without incident.