25 Jan 2006 01:05:12 +1100

AUSTRALIAN PRAYER NETWORK NEWSLETTER

* THE BATTLE FOR SYDNEY

* NO HAM FOR CHRISTMAS – IT MAY OFFEND

THE BATTLE FOR SYDNEY

Editors comment: Some would know that our National 24 Hour Prayer Watch has been praying for our media continuously throughout 2005. We believe the media’s ongoing exposure of the underlying issues behind 10 years of crime gangs and violence previously being swept under the carpet, is in part an answer to those prayers.

We believe the events subject to these ongoing reports are at the cutting edge of a spiritual battle that is going on for Sydney and ultimately Australia. The outward manifestation centres around people, crime and governmental authorities however it is the spiritual battle that we must engage in through prayer so that the final victory belongs to the Lord.

Events this week have brought further revelation of the problems surrounding gang violence in Sydney.

* The media has exposed the existence of video footage in the hands of the Police showing middle eastern men bashing a young Australian man on the night following the Cronulla riots. The existence of the video had previously been denied by both the Commander of the Task Force investigating the riots and the Police Commissioner himself.

* This resulted in the Task Force Commander being removed from his position and returned to a lesser position.

* Task force personnel revolted threatening industrial action if the Commander was not immediately re-instated.

* The former Commander was re-instated as second in command to a new Commander appointed by the Police Commissioner. The following report has been compiled from various articles in the Sydney Sun-Herald and Sydney Morning Herald covering important aspects of the case for your continued prayers.

Miranda Devine writes:

“If Premier Morris Iemma thought the sacrificial removal of Detective Superintendent Dennis Bray as head of the taskforce investigating December’s race riots in the southern beaches would end accusations that police have been running scared from Middle Eastern gangs, he is mistaken.

On Friday, Bray, a respected homicide and armed hold-up squad veteran of almost 30 years, was told by an emissary of Police Commissioner Ken Moroney he was to be removed from Strike Force Enoggera and reinstated as detective chief inspector at Blacktown. Moroney never told Bray, who is on leave and upset, why he was removed, but he and Iemma have told the media of their anger that Bray did not disclose the existence of security videotape footage showing a 35-year-old electrician, Steve B, being attacked by about 30 youths of the proverbial Middle Eastern appearance on the night after the Cronulla riots.

It is a measure of Bray’s character that on Friday every member of his taskforce stood beside Police Association president Bob Pritchard to demand his reinstatement. Pritchard says the disbanding of the Tactical Response Group by the Greiner government was the first step in a systematic disempowerment of police that has resulted in the sort of unchecked gangthuggery experienced in Cronulla and elsewhere.

He cites as an example of the obstacles in the path of proper policing an incident at a McDonald’s at Menai in 1998. Locals had been complaining about harassment from young men of Middle Eastern extraction. After a police car was attacked in the car park, “the police decided to do something”, Pritchard said. “They were sick of being told by the bosses to tread carefully because every time someone goes to court there’s some spurious complaint which devalues the integrity of the police officer.”

Police went to the car park with dogs and arrested 19 men on charges from offensive language to assaulting police. But the magistrate dismissed all charges, and accused police of “baiting” the young men. After years of ombudsman and internal police inquiries, an officer from the dog squad was charged with assault because his dog bit a youth. Three years later he was cleared. At least seven officers involved in the Menai incident resigned.

Paul Sheehan writes:

On ANZAC day 1998, police were called to the Lakemba Mosque when a fight broke out between two groups of Muslims, some armed with knives and at least one brandishing a gun. One of the officers called to the scene was Detective Sergeant John Doran.

“Pistols and knives were reportedly produced within the mosque and an ambulance was required following the fracas,” Doran told me last week. The violence involved a dispute between members of the Lebanese Muslim Association and about 20 members of the Islamic Youth Movement.

“I went with Stewart Smith, now the Superintendent at Dubbo, and we interviewed the leader of the mosque, Sheik [Taj El-Din] Hilaly, and [his spokesman-interpreter] Keysar Trad, in Hilaly’s office,” Doran said. “As witnesses, they were not helpful.”

Well before the incident in the mosque, which disturbed him because of the violent fanaticism of some of the combatants, Doran had expressed concern to his superiors at a growing culture of lawlessness in Lakemba and adjacent areas driven by ethnic crime and the failure to recognise and contain the threat. He had written an official complaint, dated February 23, 1998, which stated, in part:

“I wish to make a formal complaint concerning resourcing of investigative staff attached to the Campsie Local Area Command. The staff of this office are not disillusioned, they are shell-shocked and burnt out. Investigations are not being conducted, are being glossed over, and major crimes in theft and drug-dealing ignored because of a refusal to staff the command with a sufficiently resourced investigative team. No doubt, the fact that I raise these issues will result in some action against me, be it transfer or otherwise, but the situation is nothing short of a joke and must be remedied.”

Doran was gone by the following year, retired, one of the hundreds of disillusioned senior police to leave the force in the wake of the Wood Royal Commission.

His protest was lodged almost exactly eight years ago, and his experience was not an isolated incident. Former senior police have given me enough material to keep this column going for weeks, and some of their information is volatile, detailed and incriminating of the State Government.

In the eight years since Doran’s protest, a disconnected, violent, racist, criminal subculture has grown within Sydney’s Muslim community, while denial and blame-shifting remained intact at police headquarters. This was personified by Commissioner Ken Moroney’s removal of Detective Superintendent Dennis Bray from the command of Strike Force Enoggera, an action that has prompted open revolt by his command. As Doran told me yesterday: “His men are outraged because Dennis Bray is an excellent officer. There’s no one on the force with more competence or more integrity.”

The treatment of Bray exacerbates the perception among police that while they do society’s dirty work on the streets the criminals they arrest have a gold-plated complaints system to manipulate, a system absurdly vulnerable to vexatious complaints. Police must also endure rulings from members of the judiciary that they should expect to be abused and insulted in the course of their duty. Police based in the electorates of Lakemba and Bankstown endure open contempt on a daily basis.

There also remain questions about the Government’s priorities after the Cronulla riot and the revenge attacks that followed. Police were quick to subpoena the Herald for photos taken during the paper’s coverage of the violence at Cronulla on December 11. Strangely, no subpoena has ever been received for the Herald’s images taken the following night, December 12, when convoys of revenge attacks formed in Lakemba and Punchbowl before going on a largely unchecked rampage.

The big questions therefore remain: when is the penny finally going to drop for the NSW Government about the problems coming out of a subculture centred in Iemma’s electorate? When are they going to realise that the gang rapes, the anti-terrorist sweeps by ASIO, the drug trade, the gun trade, the car rebirthing trade, and the thousands of incidents of harassment and intimidation are all linked, all part of the same cultural source?

As a result, six weeks after the Cronulla riot, which itself was the latest in innumerable warnings, there remains little evidence any of those responsible for the pre-meditated, large-scale racial violence co-ordinated in Punchbowl and Lakemba on December 11 and 12 would ever have had to worry about the consequences had it not been for a media uprising that began on January 14 and is not going to stop.

Australian Associated Press reports:

NSW Police Association president Bob Pritchard welcomed Mr Moroney’s decision to reinstate Supt Bray as second-in-command of Strike Force Enoggera.

“It’s a pity that the commissioner did not accept the recommendations of the task force to reinstate Mr Bray as the commander,” Mr Pritchard told reporters. He said there was no concern about Supt Bray working under Supt McKay.

The new commander of the strike force Supt McKay has immediately called on the Middle Eastern community to reveal the names of youths seen on the controversial security footage. “I have to say that it is very disappointing because I know there are leading and influential members of the ethnic community who know exactly who these people are on the tape,” Det Supt McKay said. “I appeal to their decency to come forward and start naming names.”

STOP PRESS

The first arrests of those responsible for the retaliation bashing of an Australian man on the evening of the Cronulla riots were enacted yesterday. Police are looking for another two men whose identity they know. These arrests hopefully represent a breakthrough that will result in an even handed approach to the arrest of those involved in past and future crimes of violence. We will watch further developments with interest.

Please continue to pray as the Holy Spirit leads.

Source: Compiled by the APN from various newspaper articles

———————————————– NO HAM FOR CHRISTMAS – IT MAY OFFEND

A WA hospital scrubbed baked ham from its Christmas menu, fearing Muslim patients could be offended.

It has also overhauled its entire menu so that all meals are now halal – containing only meat and other food prepared according to Muslim customs. But Port Hedland Regional Hospital staff and many non-Muslim patients are outraged, saying it is a case of political correctness gone mad.

Other WA hospitals are also introducing halal dining, though the Health Department says Port Hedland is the only one to convert its entire menu to suit Muslims. Hospital directors decided to axe the traditional festive season baked ham because of the high percentage of Muslim patients. Eating pork or ham is forbidden under Muslim custom. Until now, Muslims were asked to supply their own food if they did not want to eat hospital fare.

The hospital’s nursing director, Judy Davis, said though ham was not on the menu, Christian patients did not miss out on festive cheer. They still had prawns and all sorts of other special treats,” she said.

But one long-time Port Hedland hospital worker told The Sunday Times the menu change was “un Australian”. “Now all we need is for someone of the Hindu faith to jump up and down and we’ll have no beef. Before we know it, if you’re sick in Port Hedland, you will have to be happy with a diet of boiled rice and a cup of tea.” Source: The Sunday Times

(WA)

Have you visited our Web Site? http://www.ausprayernet.org.au/

You can print this e-mail with formating at the following web-address: http://www.ausprayernet.org.au/newsletter/PrintNewsletter.php?e_id=00000000892