Saturday, February 05, 2005
YOU VOTE YOU DIE
Miranda Devine reports on the intimidation (and worse) of Iraqi voters in Sydney, Australia:
Brawls, gunshot wounds, a broken arm, vandalised shops, a bomb scare and death threats led Sheik Haydar Naji, 37, of Auburn’s Ahl Albait Islamic Centre, to advise voters to scrub their fingers clean of blue ink, as he had done.
Four men are recovering from gunshot wounds and other injuries after a brawl last Sunday night, in which bullets flew through windows on Auburn Road and shattered windscreens.
Sheik Naji, who came to Sydney in 1996 as a refugee, believes local terrorist sympathisers are responsible. But he is reluctant to elaborate for fear of jeopardising police investigations.
Others in the community say the trouble began last Saturday, after the polling booth on Queen Street opened. At first the only protesters were peaceful, members of communist and socialist parties. But at about 11am, 20 to 25 men, said by locals to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon, but not Iraq, arrived and began to intimidate voters.
They unfurled a banner which declared in Arabic: “You vote You die”. They waved the ominous black flag of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same flag which features in grisly video beheadings of foreign hostages.
So far not a single person Zarqawi-supporting hate puppy has been arrested over this. I wonder if they vote in Australian elections. (Earlier report here.)