Sudanese race row clouds Australia election
November 16, 2007 (MOOROOKA, Australia) — Alsiddig Mohamed is angry and, like thousands of Sudanese living in one of Australia’s election-turning swing seats, he wants the conservative government to know and feel it.
Mohamed, 41, is unhappy about racial overtones in the campaign for the Nov. 24 election, after the conservative government froze its refugee intake from Africa, blaming crime and a gang culture amongst Sudanese arrivals.
The announcement has shocked Moorooka in the Queensland seat of Moreton, an ethnically-diverse electorate with African, Chinese and Indian immigrants. It is held by Prime Minister John Howard’s conservatives by a tight 2.8 percent margin.
“I wanted to start life again, but now the government has made us very angry. Everyone from the African community is very angry and we all want Labor to win,” the softly spoken Mohamed, who calls himself Adam, tells Reuters over a breakfast pancake.
Moreton is one of at least four seats tipped to change hands to Labor’s Kevin Rudd in his home Queensland state, which election analysts say is key to toppling Howard’s 11- year government.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was pointing mainly to problems in the southern city of Melbourne, where a Sudanese teenager was recently bashed to death, when he called the freeze.
But Moreton’s local member of parliament, conservative Gary Hardgrave, joined the ensuing debate, saying his community was “exhausted” by Sudanese arrivals totalling 6,000 in Queensland.
Also fuelling race accusations is former firebrand lawmaker Pauline Hanson, who attracted almost a million votes with her anti Asian-immigration views at the height of her rise in 1998.
Hanson is running again for a Senate seat in Queensland, this time on a platform to stop Muslim immigration. While few analysts give her any chance of winning a seat, she has backed the government’s position on African and Sudanese refugees.
“You can’t bring people into the country who are incompatible with our way of life and culture. They get around in gangs and there is escalating crime that is happening,” she said.
QUEENSLAND CRUCIAL
Australia is a nation of immigrants with one in four of the 21 million population born overseas. It expects to take in around 165,000 migrants this year including 13,000 refugees, now to come from closer to home including Myanmar and other parts of Asia.
Howard has won four straight elections with his tough stand on illegal immigration and push for “Australian” values, with undercurrents of nationalism.
Labor currently holds just six of the 29 lower house seats in the northern tropical “Sunshine State”. Labor’s Rudd needs to win 16 more seats to win power on Nov. 24, with polls showing he has a solid election-winning lead over Howard.
Howard, 68, said it was “contemptible” to suggest his government was playing race politics to win the election. But Moorooka voters see it differently and many are furious about the targeting of the Sudanese community.
In a small arcade, shoe shop owner Geoff Richters, 67, says the only crimes the Sudanese are guilty of are being loud and culturally different as they gossip on the footpath.
“They are the most delightful people, and smart. They know how to run a business. I’ve been here 13 years and I’m one of only two white-owned shops left,” he says.
Mohamed spent four years in a remote outback jail for illegal immigrants after arriving by boat from Malaysia, working as a camp chef until his 2001 release allowed him to open the Umdorman Cafe on the outskirts of Brisbane in northern Queensland state.
A fence separates his Sudanese-dominated side of the highway from mostly white-owned shops across the street, but cultural differences are easing with time, he says, which conservative MP Hardgrave will soon find out.
“I think it will be very bad here for the government,” he says.
(Reuters)