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Notes:Meeting
Notes: 28 May 2003

Consultation hosted by the
Australian Arabic Council, Melbourne, 28 May 2003

The meeting was attended by four invited participants
and by Susanna Iuliano and Omeima Sukkarieh from HREOC.

1. What are your experiences
of discrimination and vilification?

Prejudice in context

“In
the month after September 11 we had a 20-fold rise in reports of incidents
of racial vilification. So it peaked very much. September 11th came
as a shock and people were extremely scared.

“The
anti-war movement seems to have had some sort of an effect on the amount
of racism [during the Iraq War]. There has been a lot of the community
that was very supportive of the [negative] impact of the war in Iraq
and it hasn’t sparked as much racism as it did after September
11th. The peace movement seems to be facilitating the voice for Arabic
and Muslim Australians in rallies and that support of the Arabic and
Muslim communities. The Gulf War - we were expecting it for a very long
time. The AAC [Australian Arabic Council] were working on the war thing
a year before it happened. We knew it was coming. So I think, because
it wasn’t a shock, that had an affect. There [still] wasn’t
a lot of space but there was some within the public sphere for Arabic
and Muslim Australians to put there point across. Within the broadsheet
papers or on the radio not enough but [at least] there wasn’t
that fearful reaction immediately after which I think was one of the
main causes of that cowardly racism where you yell out stuff on the
street. It’s quite often just unleashing a pressure valve which
they have built up and that combines with their ignorance and it explodes.

“From
the Arabic Council’s point of view it is obvious that Muslim women
are the most visible. But discrimination has many forms and it is just
not about the women who are assaulted or taunted in a public place.
It’s [also] people being told to change their names in the workplace.
We have had a lot of incidents where young professionals have been told
that unless they change their name they are not going to get the job.
[Also] reports of discrimination within the education system, by police
and police not being as attentive. So it’s right across the board
not just in a public space. In public space, if there is an assault
then the police can be involved. But most of it is more about comments
yelled out or people feeling like they are not getting served in a shop.”

“But
as you said after war in Iraq I have found it is getting a little bit
less. Some people think that we have to be very kind to these people
because there is a war in their country. I believe it is just for a
short time and I believe that later there will be you know…”

Impacts on community relations

“Before
Iraq they [Arabic speakers and others from the Middle East; Christians
and Muslims] got on alright together. They were saying ‘We are
all here. We all have the same reason that we left the country’.
But especially now when there is no security in Iraq and some of them
have a lot of problems from Iraq about their families, it’s started
to get a little bit harder. They start talking about their religion
now: Muslim and Christian. For example, I have two families [clients]
who are Assyrian and from Iraq. Their relatives have been killed at
home. Now what is happening in Iraq is affecting the relationship between
Christian and Muslim. Some people understood that Assyrians were backing
Saddam Hussein regime. That’s why.”

Impacts on children and young
people

“My
son told me that his friend at school was really embarrassed and shy
to say to the other kids that he is Arab. I said ‘Just encourage
him’. He said ‘No mum he is too scared to say. He keeps
saying I am Italian or Greek’. Why? Because he thinks the other
kids look at him and think he is bad, he is no good.”

“There
were problems a few years ago that a group of youth established a group
and called themselves the Lebanese Tigers. Now I spoke to the individuals
as I was a youth officer [at the time]. I asked him questions and I
come back to what he said. At school other kids labelled you [as] ‘you
bloody Arab’, etc. So these kids in school they form a little
net for protection to protect each other. But that net moved and got
bigger and bigger and it moved to the street. So it became a gang. It
started as protection then they go onto other things as they get older
and older.”

Discrimination in the workplace

“One
of my clients, who I have been working with for a long time, she finds
a position available. She decided to apply and she came to the office
and I helped her with all the papers and things. She had a very good
experience and certificates from overseas from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
She had been there very many years working as a receptionist. Her English
is perfect, typing, everything. She can speak three languages. I arranged
the interview and she went. They accepted her for the job. ... But the
first week she came to work, the boss’s wife comes back from holiday.
She finds the receptionist lady was there wearing a scarf. And she said
‘Oh no. You go. We do not have opportunity for you to work. We
don’t want you to work here no more’. She said to her ‘I
just started two or three days ago’. And she say ‘No no.
I am his wife. Don’t come anymore unless you change the scarf’.”

Experiences at school

“Most
people in Australia do not realise that there is a difference between
Muslim and Arab. They believe all Arabs are Muslim. It is not only the
hijab that makes them treat those people badly. Sometimes even if with
the dark hair they think you are from the Middle East and Muslim straight
away. After September 11th happened kids at school they keep telling
my kids, ‘You are Muslim’. But we are not Muslim. We are
from the Middle East but we are Christian. Once my son started a fight
at school with an Italian. When I ask my son in front of teacher why
do you fight with this student, he says because he was teasing another
girl with the scarf calling her ‘nappy head’.”

“Approximately
four months after September 11th reports were starting to feed into
the Council that instead of calling other kids a derogatory term like
‘wog’, it was ‘Arab’. It didn’t matter
what the background of the person. If a kid couldn’t kick a football
he was called a ‘dirty Arab’. That for me illustrates how
comprehensively that infiltrated down into the school from what they
see in the media. It wasn’t just identifying someone from a Middle
Eastern background. It was about saying if you can’t play footy
you are a dirty Arab.”

“Something
happened to me last week. What happened was the school phoned me and
said ‘We have some difficulties with some families from Iraq,
Muslim and Christian. There were four Muslim families and five Christian
families. They said ‘They came here for the meeting. They are
newly arrived and with the interpreter we explained to them that their
kids need to go to another school because there is an English program
there four days a week and one day they come to the original school.
But those parents, we didn’t hear anything from them and we can’t
find them even at school when they come to collect their kids. Can you
find what’s happening?’

“So
I said ‘Ok. Just arrange a time between the parents, kids, me
and the school and we will find what is happening’. So we went
there and I was waiting for half an hour. At three o’clock the
bell rang and no parents to collect the kids. I saw the kids. They just
walked out of school and went home. Very small kids. I believe they
can’t even cross the road or do anything unless their parents
collect them. So I said something is happening here. So I followed the
kids and saw all of the parents on the corner of the school. They were
hiding and they had told the kids ‘Just come to the corner and
we will collect you’.

“I
said ‘What is happening here? We have a meeting together.’
They said ‘No, no. We are not going to this meeting. Please don’t
tell them that we are here. We are going to go home’. I said ‘No.
Come. We are going to sit and talk. Why are you scared?’

“So
we went there and the principal started to talk about the project. Ok
so you spend all this money for this project but those people they need
to educate a little bit. Give them more of an idea about what is this
project and what is the benefit of this project. Not just through an
interpreter word for word who then says bye bye and goes home.

“The
principal starts to talk about the project and when I look at them their
eyes are telling me that there is something missing here. I said ‘Can
you just give me a second? I just want to talk to them’. I said
‘Do you know why you are here?’ They said ‘Yes we
know. I don’t know. Maybe we did something really bad. They want
to remove our kids from this school to another school. They want to
punish us’. I said ‘ Who said that?’ And they said
‘Yes, yes. Through the interpreter we understand they don’t
like our kids to be in this school’.

“I
said ‘Look, are you going to any of these English classes?’
They said ‘Yes’. I said ‘Do you know your son needs
exactly the same as you - some extra English classes. How would you
feel if your son was sitting in a class and the whole place know what
is going on and your son doesn’t have any idea at all? Or in case
your son he say something and all the kids start laughing or tease?
Do you like that?’. They said ‘Oh no. I do not want my kids
to be less than others’. I said ‘Later when they finish
primary they go to high school. They are not doing one to one [any more].
They are going to be sitting with 20-30 kids. He must do something as
this extra English is to his benefit. They are spending money to give
your son an opportunity so when he comes back to this school once a
week he knows what is happening’. They said ‘Ok now we know
what is happening. We don’t mind even to pay $20 a week so a bus
can collect our kids and take them to the other school’.”

The role of the media

“My
view is that [media in Victoria] is not as sensationalised. The Victorian
public doesn’t accept the same level of reporting that the Sydney
public accepts to be frank. I have been up in Sydney and listened to
radio and read newspapers and you do not get that level of hysteria
here in Melbourne. You certainly get a lot of racism within the press
but not that level of hysteria. And I think that tends to be the difference
between Sydney and Melbourne.

“Part
of that is because it is not legitimised by the government in Melbourne.
When you deal with issues of crime and ethnicity in Melbourne, it doesn’t
have the undertones of the use of ethnic descriptors. Criminals by law
are not allowed to be referred to as of Middle Eastern appearance in
Victoria because it was suggested by the council that that would increase
racism. New South Wales is the only state that still has ethnic descriptors.
So when you have ethnic descriptors and irresponsible media and then
a Premier or people of power who are suggesting that terms like Middle
Eastern appearance are ok, that criminal activity is somehow inherent
in particular ethnicity, they feed each other. Those three areas of
police, the media and the government, if they are legitimising what
each other is doing, then it builds up. Here the government doesn’t
support it. It has much stronger diversity policies. They do not feed
it.”

“Most
of the time I blame the media. The media here always report the negative.
The good things are never reported. For example, when we have the Arabic
festival, it was initiative to get all the Arabic speaking other cultural
groups together for the festival. We invited the media and none of them
attended. In one of the meetings I put up a proposal. I said I wanted
to bring the media to this festival. I said just get two little boys
to start a fight and somebody will ring the media. … The media
must take a major role to turn the clock around and turn the things
from negative to positive. Concentrate on the good things that are happening.

“It
is not always that blatant. I know that we had a really good story.
We had a big school forum in the northern region with all the teachers,
the principals and all the students and community workers. It was a
really positive initiative about everyone getting together and working
out strategies to address racism post September 11th. We lobbied the
paper and they agreed to send a journalist and to do a story on it.
The story ended up being a photo of two Muslim girls in a schoolyard
with ‘Muslim girls attacked’ across the top. That is the
problem: the Arabic community are either the victims or the villains.
There is no room in the middle with a solution to show that they are
just like everyone else in the community. They are either fighting or
they are victim of vilification. The only way we can get into the media
is to push the vilification side and that is ridiculous as there are
so many good people in the community who are all working together and
trying to actively encourage the community to participate.”

2. What is being done to fight
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?

Community organisation strategies
and projects

“The
Australian Arabic Council had a really effective strategy that came
out of September 11th last year, knowing that the first anniversary
was going to bring up a lot of images and concerns for the community.
We tried particularly in one school where there had been a lot of racism.
We had a [Council] member address the assembly [also a teacher at the
school]. We actually tried to get the Education Department’s support
for it as a wider initiative. This one person did a heartfelt speech
at this school assembly. The kids were probably from a lower social
economic background with a lot of diversity and a lot of racism that,
in particular, teachers of Arabic background at that school felt quite
intensely. After this person got up and did the speech in assembly,
she was walking around that afternoon and students were coming up and
saying ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise how my racism was going
to affect you’. And they changed their attitude from that day.
So that worked at that school in terms of addressing that teacher’s
workplace. That’s a really positive way in which people from the
Arabic community particularly when they are working in schools can affect
the actual environment which they are in every day. When it is personal
it hits home a bit more.”

“There
is a Muslim Women’s group now in my area. But some of them they
are scared to attend the group because the male in the community says
‘Why are you attending this group? What are they going to teach
you - how to complain about your husband? How to call the police?’
Not only Muslims but also Assyrians. [When they arrive here] the men
settle better than the women especially if the woman does not have any
family here. She feels lonely and doesn’t know what to do. They
are really isolated because most of the time they are at home looking
after the kids, and the husband is doing most of the things outside
the house. He knows where to go banking, schooling, social security,
everything. But I find the women are more isolated. They do not have
any idea what is happening outside.”

“[Through
the efforts of the AAC] the Arabic community has now officially mobilised
that when SBS shows a program for example on the Palestinian and Israeli
conflict, if it is pro-Israeli the Arabic community is now mobilised
enough so that they can send out an email and people complain to SBS.
They will then balance it with one that shows the Palestinian side.
But who watches SBS? [Only] the people who are aware of what is happening
in the world.

“At
the moment there are email alert lists where if there is an article
in the newspaper we circulate an email out saying that this article
has been in the newspaper, here is a suggested few issues that you could
write about in response and here is the email address of the newspaper.
It has been done of the last few years in relationship to various objectionable
articles that come up. It’s not just articles. It is TV programs.
If ‘Sixty Minutes’ does a report on the Middle East that
is particularly biased …

“ABC
is great as they are actually forced to respond. If they get a certain
amount of complaints, it is actually necessary that they seek to address
it. I have had success with Channel Nine. On the anniversary of September
11th they had this awful re-enactment of the hijacking of one of the
planes at 6.30pm. It was so inappropriate. It had the stereotypical
looking Arabs running around planes speaking in what was apparently
Arabic but it sounded nothing like it and holding knives to people’s
throats. And this was at 6.30 at night on the anniversary of September
11th. So I called Channel Nine and then I called two friends and both
of them called two friends and it went on like that. And they took it
off after we had been on the phone. I don’t know whether that
was because of a whole lot of complaints or whether it was because something
else happened.

“Similarly
with newspaper. If they get a whole lot of letters they are forced to
print them. We can jump up and down about the media again and again
but we also have to play their game. So if something objectionable is
written in the newspaper we have to know the lines so they we can respond
to it. If they do get a response then they will print a letter or they
will respond by trying not to do it next time.”

Government strategies and
projects

Some of the activities of Moreland City Council (http://www.moreland.vic.gov.au/)were
described. Moreland has a population of 140,000 with more than 145 languages
spoken.

Strategies and projects include:

  • Multicultural
    Policy and Action Plan 2001-2004. Central to the plan is the principle
    that “Residents of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
    should not experience barriers to access and participation”.
  • First Victorian
    Council to establish ‘Language Link’ ensuring customers
    can communicate with Council staff in their language of choice. Language
    Link is “a multilingual telephone information service for the
    non-English speaking background members of Moreland's community”.
    Information is also available on the Council’s website in nine
    languages as well as English.
  • Information
    brochures and seminars to encourage residents to stand for Council,
    including seminars for Arabic-speaking people.
  • Open question
    time – first half hour of each Council meeting set aside for residents’
    questions. Unlike the situation in other councils, Moreland residents
    do not have to give notice of their questions.

Not all local governments have developed such positive
relationships with their Arab residents.

“I
got a phone call from a Multicultural Liaison Officer from a city council
… to tell me that there was a group of Arabic speaking people
on the beach and that they were there until quite late at night. The
Council wanted them to move and could we send a translator. So I said
‘Have you been to talk to them?’ ‘Oh no’, she
said, ‘There are hundreds of them’…. It turned out
that there was something like 40 people; there wasn’t hundreds
at all. I said to her ‘Have you talked to them?’ ‘Oh
no. I wanted to know the culturally appropriate manner in which to tell
them that they are being too noisy and to go home.’ I said ‘They
probably speak English. Just go and talk to them.’ ‘Oh no.
You will need to send a translator.’ I just thought she hasn’t
even gone and asked these people what they were doing there. I said
‘They are Australian citizens. Go and tell them to go home if
they are being too noisy. Tell them they are annoying the neighbours.
Treat them like anyone else but don’t stereotype.’ This
is the Multicultural Liaison Officer who confidently told me that she
had no Arabs living in her electorate. [But] I know of several people
of that background living in her city council who may not appear in
the hijab and may not look like a typical Arab. But she wouldn’t
even go and talk to them without taking someone with her because she
was too scared.”

3. What more could be done
to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?

Tackling media misinformation
and stereotypes

“As
soon as the media approaches anybody in the community they need to have
training about how the media will edit, in particular, and take what
they say on board. A lot of people need to be prepared that if they
are going to call up for talkback they are probably going to get somebody
pretty rude to talk back to them on the phone and they have got to learn
how to handle that. So I think media training for spokespeople is really
important. Also really important is that we harness a lot of the younger
Arabic Australians to encourage them that when they read something in
the paper that they disagree with that they respond to it. Ultimately
commercial media is commercial and has to respond to the way the audience
respond to it.”

“I
think on issues of Arabic Australians and Muslim Australians, whoever
puts their hands up is going to be shot down. That was shown in New
South Wales. That was the anti-discrimination commissioner defending
the Arabic community. I think the most effective way is to (a) mobilise
especially Arabic kids as it gives them something to do and a way in
which they can address racism. If you teach them how to write letters
to the papers and how to respond that gives them something to do, to
respond to the way they are being marginalised. The other side of that
is encouraging a wider network of prominent Australians to write letters
and issue press releases condemning it. It is all very fine for HREOC
to do it and the EOC. Unless we have got celebrities or footballers
doing it then it is not going to make a difference at all because you
are preaching to the converted.”

Building awareness and self-esteem
in the Arabic community

“Within
the Arabic communities, something that the Australian Arabic Council
is looking at doing with young people at the moment is that we need
to provide education seminars for Arabic Australians about what are
the positive things about Arabic culture? They do not learn that at
school. If kids were taught at school that Arabs came up with the first
writing system and that they invented this and that and look at this
history, then when someone comes and says to them ‘You are a terrorist’,
they have got a smart comment to come back with. They can say, ‘Well
actually did you know that the Arabs invented this? So there you go’.
Again empower them to speak up for themselves.”

“At
the local school there should be seminars not only on how the Italians
live or the Lebanese live or the Iraqis or the Iranians. Multiculturalism
should be a subject itself.”

Anti-discrimination laws and
complaints processes

“[Putting
in a complaint] is a long process and it wasn’t going to get her
job back. It is good to make complaints but it is not going to get her
job back instantly. Some people are even scared to. I told this lady
we are going to call Equal Opportunity Commission and she said no. I
found many people are talking to me about their experiences and they
say ‘Please don’t tell anyone’. Some people are afraid.

“They’re
frightened because of where they come from. In Iraq we do not have the
right to complain. Whether it is good or bad we do not have the right
to complain: easy, simple. For example, if I go and visit a doctor and
he gives me an injection, I do not have right to ask what is this injection
for. How can I complain? In Iraq [I had to] fight for my passport. The
officer is writing my name wrong - my name and my kids’. I was
frightened to death to tell him that spelling was wrong. I was too frightened
to say anything. If I say anything he would say ‘Who are you?
Who do you think you are? Do you think that you are better than me?
No passport - go home’. With all this experience we have had there
we can’t complain because we are scared to complain.

“It
will be very difficult to change [that attitude]. We aim to try and
educate all the women. My aim is with mums and build a good family.
We say that if you are not happy with something ask. Even at a parents’
interview at school sometimes they are scared to go. They say ‘Yes.
Yes.’ and smile, or ‘No. No.’ They do not ask what
is my son doing at school. They have a right to know what he is studying
but they are scared to. They keep it inside or they tell the group or
neighbours that speak Arabic.”

“Unless
you educate people you are always going to have racism. And in the kind
of racism that the Arabic community faces you can’t legislate
it. Who is going to take the guy to court who drove past you in the
street and yelled things out of the window?

“What
individual is going to put themselves up as an example like that? That
is the issue. People are not going to report that kind of thing. People
come to us and very rarely they realise that we can do a complaint.
People do not want to take it to court. They are worried about the time
it is going to take, the fact that they are probably going to have a
newspaper column written about them and that it might even make the
news. Who would want to go through that? And why do that when you probably
go through that every day, every week? Why would you want to do that
when you see what happens to the people that do go up on the stand?
The Islamic Council in Victoria lodged a complaint under the Act and
they got vilified in the media for it. As a Council we would think twice
about lodging a complaint because we do not have the resources to lodge
a media campaign.

“[Re
the recently introduced Victorian racial and religious vilification
laws] Our platform was that unless there was an educational campaign
about diversity in general to accompany the legislation then it wasn’t
going to work. They did a brief diverse Victoria campaign. I don’t
think it was hard hitting. What I think we need sometimes is like the
advertising campaign about road deaths … strong ads that tell
people no. Instead what we get is images of food and dance. We don’t
get images of multicultural communities contributing.

“You
are not going to solve anything with punitive measures. You will only
solve it with education and that is really expensive. We have wanted
that for a long time and it requires a lot of resources. But that is
how you will fix the problem.”