NSW cops to set up anti-Arab squad

Iggy Kim, Sydney

On January 18, NSW police commissioner Ken Moroney announced that he will recommend to police minister John Watkins that Taskforce Gain, which focuses on gangs linked to "Middle Eastern organised crime", be given extra resources and made a permanent squad.

The 160-strong Taskforce Gain was set up last October in response to a racist propaganda blitz by the Murdoch press, radio shock-jocks, and the NSW Labor government and Liberal Party opposition.

This blitz was prompted by several shootings involving Arab Australians. On October 14, Premier Bob Carr declared, "Obey the law — or ship out of Australia". He added that he didn't want to see "our civilisation dragged back to medieval standards".

Two weeks later, Liberal Party leader John Brogden likened the crimes to "a scene from Baghdad".

Praising Moroney's proposal, NSW National Party leader Andrew Stoner told Radio 2SM on January 19: "The police know, the community knows and victims of crime know that organised Middle Eastern crime gangs are terrorising whole suburbs in south-western Sydney."

This racist presentation of crime has concerned Arab-Australian community leaders. Keysar Trad, vice-president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, welcomed the proposed new police unit but criticised the willingness of politicians in the debate on law and order "to resort to the race card — and create fear and division within society". He said this smacks of "political opportunism".

Bashir Sawalha, a Palestinian-Australian member of the Greens and the Canterbury-Bankstown Peace Group, told Green Left Weekly: "Crime does not have a race, colour or religion. We all should work together to reduce crime, through early intervention, social welfare, reducing child abuse, alleviating poverty, adequate and appropriate education, training and employment programs and rehabilitation programs."

Raul Bassi, a member of the Socialist Alliance and the Canterbury-Bankstown Peace Group, slammed the new police unit as racist: "Why is it, when crimes are committed by individual Arab Australians, the whole Arab-Australian community is dragged in for public scrutiny? Why didn't Brogden liken the shootings last October to a scene from LA or New York?

"This is because the racist politicians and their mouthpieces in the corporate media have a specific agenda of drumming up fear and loathing to deflect community anger away from the real source of social problems — their anti-people policies. This new police unit is an extension of this racist offensive.

"Labor and Liberal are seeking to carve out support on the basis of racial division because that's all they have left, as their policies are basically attacks on all working people."

From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.

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From GLW issue 568