Peace is ‘enforced’ in this Sydney suburb

In an Indian restaurant in a Sydney suburb, knots of Indian students munch away on samosas and kachoris, locked in animated discussion. But the subject of intense debate on Tuesday isn’t what you might expect of a community that last week had erupted in rage over a wave of attacks on them. All they have on their minds is India’s early exit from the Twenty20 cricket tournament.

“We’ve been told to keep off the streets,” says Sumit, 22. “We’re under tremendous pressure from community leaders, so we don’t have much of a choice.” For three nights last week, Harris Park, the western suburb of Sydney, witnessed dramatic scenes when Indian students demonstrated for three nights to protest attacks they had blamed on Lebanese street gangs.

“The problem was played up excessively by the media,” says Avtar Singh, proprietor of Billu’s Indian Eatery and Sweet House. “We have told students to cool down and call off their agitation.” As for the problem with Lebanese gangs, Singh said it was “minor”, involving “some elements… the fact that they were Lebanese and victims were Indian students was incidental.”

Across the road from Singh’s restaurant, Youssef El Kadi, Lebanese owner of Sweet Land Patisserie, echoes the theme. “It was over-dramatised by the media,” says El Kadi. “There’s no real problem between Indian and Lebanese communities. We’re good friends.”

The bhai-bhai bonhomie isn’t feigned, it’s for real. Yet, there are stirrings of change in Harris Park, which was once Lebanese-majority but which has in recent years seen an explosion in the Indian population.

Walking the streets of Harris Park, it is easy to convince oneself that one is in small-town India, given the profusion of Indian restaurants, provision stores, Bollywood DVD rental shops and Hindi film posters.

“It isn’t hard to explain the Lebanese exodus,” says a resident. “Some moved to more ‘upmarket’ locations, having sold their real estate at high prices.”

But was there tension with the Indian community? “Not really,” he adds, “although there were occasional incidents when Lebanese womenfolk complained that groups of students were blocking their path in the evenings.”

An Indian journalist who works for a multinational agency in Sydney points out that radical Lebanese youth have in recent years become active in drug trafficking and Sydney’s notorious bike gangs. “In fact, there are even clashes between Lebanese Sunni bike gangs and Shia gangs,” he added.

For now, following last week’s drama, police have intensified patrolling in Harris Park. El Kadi’s Sweet Lands closes early, to keep Lebanese youth off streets. An ‘enforced’ peace reigns in Harris Park, but even that’s better, say residents, than what the community lives through routinely.