Why Sara and Issam still can’t go to Cronulla beach 20 years after the riots

A Sydney family built a swimming pool in their backyard following the 2005 Cronulla riots, hoping to provide a safe space for their children and shield them from the racial tensions that unfolded on the beach.

Protecting Children After the Riots

Issam Mansour, now 62, constructed the pool at his Punchbowl home so his children wouldn’t feel compelled to visit Cronulla to swim on hot days. “I did it to protect them,” he said.

Mansour migrated to Australia from Lebanon in the 1980s and started a family. His eldest daughter, Sara, 32, remembers frequent childhood trips to Cronulla before the riots. “We have very fond memories in our childhood of going to Cronulla every week and jumping into the high waves,” she recalled.

Two Conflicts Marked

Issam remembers feeling safe when he first arrived in Australia in 1988, a feeling he lacked as a teenager during the Lebanese Civil War. “I had my opportunity to leave that country because I don’t belong to the war,” he said. “This is why value of a human to me is very important. I see children and women and older and young people die.”

This year marked both the 20th anniversary of the Cronulla Riots and 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 12 at the time.

‘They’re Never Welcome Back’

Cronulla’s beaches were a popular destination for people living in Sydney’s southwest, but territorial tensions had been simmering. The riots were sparked when three off-duty lifesavers were injured in a fight with a group of Lebanese youth. A mass text message was then sent to around 270,000 recipients, urging “every f***ing Aussie in the Shire to get down to North Cronulla.”

The message read, “Let’s show them that this is our beach and they’re never welcome back.” The Mansour family received the message of exclusion.

Following the riots, the family stayed in their area, feeling it was the only place they were safe. “It made us go out less and it made us more insular,” Sara said.

Why Sara Marked Her Arm with ‘Wog for Life’

The Mansour family had recently returned from a trip to Lebanon before the riots, where they were viewed as Australians. After the riots, Sara began to reflect on her identity. She wrote “wog for life” on her arm with a permanent marker at school and soon after began wearing the hijab.

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

‘Not the Image We Want’

Sutherland Shire Council mayor Jack Boyd says the council is committed to ensuring the beach is safe for everyone. “It’s obviously not the image we want people to remember when they think of Cronulla, but the reality is the riots did occur,” Boyd said. “We can’t walk away from the fact and instead we have to drive down that commitment to ensuring something like that never happens again.”

The council has supported initiatives like Surf Brothers, teaching surf lifesaving skills to young people from migrant backgrounds. Despite these initiatives, neither Issam nor Sara have returned to Cronulla since the riots.

“I just can’t go,” Sara said.

Could the Cronulla Riots Happen Again?

Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman believes something similar to the Cronulla riots could happen again. “All of the ingredients that were there at the time of the Cronulla Riots twenty years ago are here now today,” he told SBS News.

Sara also feels the harmful narratives that fueled the riots remain unresolved. “It’s about acknowledging there was a big injustice that was done on that day in Cronulla, and it didn’t just come down to the people,” she said. “It came down to the machine that was feeding that narrative. And that machine has not stopped.”

Issam says his family simply wants to live peacefully. “I’m Australian. My family is Australian,” he said. “We don’t war, because we’ve been through war. We don’t want to hate, because we’ve been through that.”