Mirrabooka: Perth’s Immigrant Melting Pot
When violence is reported in the Australian mainstream media, rarely is ethnicity mentioned, due to a self-policing media code of conduct that is premised on claims the reporting of ethnicity risks inciting racism. The Australian Journalists Association code of conduct on this reads:
“2. Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.”
This seems sensible in order to prevent prejudiced reporting and inciting racism. However, this code has been recently abandoned by the mainstream media in the cases of recent violence against Indian students, probably in an attempt to highlight the particular racial problem. But indeed, the media highlighting of this problem has snowballed into an international political hot potato, resulting in Australia’s Prime Minister flying to India and consequential increased policing in Melbourne and funding to deal with the problem. As a result, there has been a notable reduction in reported violence against Indian students in Melbourne. Politicians were embarrased into dealing with the problem, that the Department of Immigration had left to fester.
But otherwise reporting of ethnicity and race is suppressed. Read any report in an Australian newspaper about a violent incident and find mention of ethnicity or race obvious by omission. This is not to say that most violence in Australia has ethnic causes, but there is a lot that is yet remains suppressed from the mainstream public. the frequency of the problem is of course known to police and to the locals that live in what have become ‘psuedo’ ethnic ghettos.
And so Australia’s problem of ethnic tension is suppressed and allowed to fester until someone dies. The death last night of a man at Mirrabooka in Perth’s inner north is a case in point.
The news item in The Australian Newspaper today reads: ‘One man dead, one critical after Perth brawl‘ and the article is quite brief:
“ONE man is dead and another is in a critical condition after a street brawl in Perth.
About 10pm (WST) yesterday police were called to Mirrabooka in the city’s north where about 20 young men were fighting in the street with sticks and other weapons. They found two men seriously injured at the scene, a police spokesman said. One man later died and the other remains in a critical condition in hospital.
The area has been cordoned off and a crime scene established.”
What the newspaper does not report is the fact that it was a fight between recent migrants from war torn countries. A Sudanese man was stabbed to death during a brawl between ethnic groups. Police and the Tactical Reponse Group later raided a house in nearby suburb of Ballajura and arrested five men, believed to be from Afghanistan.”
Mirrabooka is a low socio-economic suburb in Perth’s north. It has long had an high Aboriginal population, but recently many east African migrants, mainly from Somalia, Sudan and more recently Afghanistan have settled there. Why, is a matter for social research.
The following are three non-mainstream media sources revealling insight into the social problems at Mirrabooka:
1. http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Perth_(Western_Australia)
“Once again after more than a year of just letting this one go I have put back the “Avoid Mirrabooka” and added the ethnic (African and Aboriginal) gang terms back in to this article. If this American tourist had of known about aboriginal gangs at Mirrabooka bus station, it’s probable he would have been able to avoid the situation he found him self in and not ended up looking like this.
Also I have added a newer trend in that more buses now are coming under attacks by Aboriginal youths throwing rocks as well as a general increase in assaults on Perth buses.
Look this is not meant to be racist in anyway but rather used as a way of identifying people who may be of potential danger to a tourist similar to the Hungarian article about avoiding gypsies. Gangs of white and Asian youths also exist in Perth but these gangs tend to fight among them self and generally avoid effecting wider society. Aboriginal people in particular have many social problems that are generally no fault of their own but rather caused by the society and groups of people that they are forced to live around. Most of these problems with aboriginal and African gangs are a direct result of government mismanagement of the needs of these people and aboriginal and african people see public transport as just another government body and so it’s natural that they would vent some of their frustration out in these areas.
Seeing as one of my recent edits was edited out, can we discuss race/safety issues a little bit here to get some sort of agreement?
Someone keeps putting in a section saying visitors should avoid areas like WSBS and Mirrabooka where “African” and Aboriginal people are fighting turf warfare, or some such argument. Me, I’ve never seen or heard of this problem anywhere – not read about it nor experienced it personally. So I deleted it and recommend it stays that way.
On the other hand, I have personally experienced problems with Aboriginal people demanding money and cigarettes. I have got out of various scrapes in various places with by just stopping and having a chat, but this never seems to work here. A number of my acquaintances have had similar experiences, so I do strongly recommend avoiding contact with Aboriginal people on the street, unless you have appropriate cultural knowledge. (I don’t really want to get into an argument about why this is the case, because there are clearly very big problems that I don’t have answers to).”
2. http://www.perthstreetbikes.com/forum/f20/your-suburb-safe-not-safe-72565/2
I’ve lived in Mirrabooka, 2 break ins in a year, one of the break ins was a midnight one and the aboriginal kid that did it went straight for our vcr, pull the vcr forcefully such that it snapped the power cable from the back of it, and got away with a vcr without a power cable just before my dad woke up to the noise in the middle of the night. 4/10.
Dianella on alexander drive, graffiti sprayed onto our front wall at least once a year, burglaries probably once every 2 years, once had someone walk into our house and steal my mums bag and my wallet because we leave them on a bench at home, because we stupidly left the back door unlocked while we were both home and this was in the evening just after dinner time too.
Nedlands, no issues at all in the 6 years we were there.”
3. http://australian-news.net/Ethnic_crime_African.htm
Somali Crime Wave
“Although there are only about 3,500 Somalis in Perth, they are responsible for a mini crime wave. Numerous violent crimes committed by Somalis have hit the headlines over the past three years.
The Somalis have introduced violent car-jacking to Perth. The perpetrators, mostly with links to the African Kings, a dangerous criminal gang, have carried out a series of violent carjackings, assaults and robberies. Some examples:
Somali refugee Abdirak Mohmd Hassan was jailed for seven years after being convicted in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on 28 May 2004 over a series of violent carjackings, including two knife-point attacks committed between October 13 and 25, 2002. In sentencing, Justice McKechnie said Hassan’s carjacking crimes indicated a disturbing pattern of criminality “largely alien to our society”.
Then in August 2005, Hassan again faced a Supreme Court trial over another violent carjacking. The victim, a young student feared she was going to die after the car she was driving was hijacked by Hassan and another Somali.
Somali refugee Dhaqane Alim, 19, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on 6 February 2004 to charge of armed robbery with violence in company. The court was told that on 20 May 2003 Alim and two co-offenders followed the victim from the Burswood train station before mugging him. Alim’s co-offender, Jye Horton, who also faces an armed robbery charge, threatened the victim with a 15 cm knife while Alim grabbed the man’s arms and rifled through his pockets, stealing a mobile phone and a wallet. The court was also told that Alim was a member of the African Kings street gang.
On 22 March 2004 five men were taken to hospital after a violent clash between Somali and Aboriginal groups armed with knives and clubs in Perth’s Northbridge area. One Aboriginal man received seven stab wounds and a suspected punctured lung after being attacked by a group of Somali men.”
Police were called to break up a violent brawl between a large number of Africans and Aboriginals in the Perth suburb of Mirrabooka on 27 December 2005. Police Commissioner O’Callaghan said police were called out 14 times in the last 12 months to similar brawls between Africans and Aboriginals.”
Immigration does not stop at the international arrival gate. Australia’s policy of immigration needs to extend well into assimilation after many years and subsequent generations, else we will see more ghettos like Mirrabooka, and more ethnic tension and violence, fuelled by a policy of media news suppression.
Why suppress ethnic tension and violence when to do so does nothing but allow it to fester into murder and social division?
Rudd, living in a gated community, remains blissfully ignorant at Australia’s expense. he has become an arrogant social menace undermining Australia’s security.