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Why Sara and Issam still can’t go to Cronulla beach twenty years after the riots
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Why Sara and Issam still can’t go to Cronulla beach twenty years after the riots

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After the Cronulla riots, Issam Mansour built a swimming pool in the backyard of his home in Punchbowl in Sydney’s south-west.
He says he did it so children didn’t have to go to Cronulla to swim on hot days.
“I did it to protect them,” he says.
Mansour was born in Lebanon and migrated to Australia, where he started his family in the 1980s.
His eldest daughter, Sara, is now 32. Before the riots, she remembers visiting Cronulla regularly.

“We have very fond memories from our childhood of going to Cronulla every week and jumping in the big waves.”

Issam Mansour (62) and his eldest daughter Sara (32) have not returned to Cronulla since 2005. Source: Delivered

Thursday marked twenty years ago One of the ugliest scenes of racial violence in Australia’s modern history occurred on December 11, 2005. On that day, around 5,000 people descended on North Cronulla beach, spurred on by a text message calling on “Aussies” to “support Leb and Wog Bashing Day”.

For families like the Mansours, the legacy of the riots is embroiled in questions about what it means to belong in Australia. They spoke to SBS News to reflect on how that day changed them and why they haven’t returned to Cronulla since.

Two conflicts highlighted

Issam, now 62, remembers the feeling of comfort and security when he first arrived in Australia in 1988.
It was safety he didn’t have as a teenager in Lebanon during the brutal civil war.
“I was given the opportunity to leave that country because I am not involved in the war,” says Issam.
“This is why the value of a human being is very important to me. I see children and women and old and young people dying.”
An old photo of a man in a white shirt

A young Issam Mansour, who was 12 when the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975. Source: Delivered

This year not only marked the 20th anniversary of the Cronulla Riotsbut the 50th anniversary of the start of the Lebanese Civil War in April 1975.

Just as the Lebanese Civil War was a pivotal moment for Issam, the Cronulla riots would leave a lasting impact on Sara, who was twelve years old at the time.
It was the same age as her father when the Lebanese civil war began.
Her family watched the riots unfold on television, as images of angry mobs attacking anyone who looked Middle Eastern were broadcast across the country.

“[It] It really dawned on me that this was a place that was no longer for us, there was a sense of anger and frustration,” Sara recalls.

‘They will never be welcome again’

Cronulla’s beaches were a popular swimming spot for people living in Sydney’s south-west, and territorial tensions had been simmering for some time.
But the catalyst for the riot came when three off-duty rescue workers were injured during a fight with a group of Lebanese youths.

A mass text message was then sent to around 270,000 recipients, calling on “every damn Australian in the Shire to get to North Cronulla”.

A shirtless man on the right tries to punch a man in a white shirt.

A police officer helps a man after he was attacked by a crowd in Cronulla on December 11, 2005. Source: MONKEY / Paul Molenaar

“Let’s show them that this is our beach and they will never be welcome again,” it said.

The message of the riots, of a firm line around who was welcome on the beach and who was not, was received by the Mansour family.
They lived across the street from Punchbowl Park at the time. They said later that evening, distressed community members gathered in the park to talk about their safety.
They said they stayed in their area afterward because it was the only place they knew they were safe.

“It made us go out less and be more isolated,” says Sara.

Why Sara marked her arm with ‘wog for life’

Just before the riots occurred, the Mansour family had returned from a trip to visit family in Lebanon.
There they were seen as Australians.

But after the riots, Sara started thinking about her identity.

At school, she used a permanent marker to write “wog for life” on her arm at school.
Not long after, she started wearing the hijab.

“I think for me it was almost a challenge and it was a sense of reclaiming my agency and controlling my identity and my body,” she says.

‘Not the image we want’

Sutherland Shire Council Mayor Jack Boyd says the council wants to ensure the beach is safe for everyone.
“It’s obviously not the image people should remember when they think of Cronulla, but the reality is that the riots happened,” Boyd said.

“We can’t run away from it and instead we must push back on the pledge to ensure something like this never happens again.”

The council has supported initiatives such as Surf Brothers, which teach life-saving surfing skills to young people from migrant backgrounds.
But despite these initiatives, neither Issam nor Sara have since returned to Cronulla.

“I just can’t go,” Sara says.

Could the Cronulla riots happen again?

Racial Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman believes something similar to the Cronulla riots could easily happen again.

“All the ingredients that were there at the time of the Cronulla riots 20 years ago are now there today,” he told SBS News.

Sara also believes that the damaging narratives that fueled the riots remain unresolved.
“It’s about recognizing that a great injustice was done that day in Cronulla, and it wasn’t just the people’s fault,” she says.

“It came down to the machine that fueled that story. And that machine hasn’t stopped.”

Two parents and a child in a stroller in front of the Sydney Opera House

Issam Mansour and his family in front of the Sydney Opera House. Source: Delivered

Issam says his family just wants to live peacefully.

“I’m Australian. My family is Australian,” he says.
“We don’t wage war because we’ve experienced war. We don’t want to hate because we’ve experienced it.”

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