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The 16-hour hostage situation at Lindt Café in Martin Place at Sydney’s busy Financial District came to an end with commandos storming the cafe killing the lone gunman Man Haron Monis, but coverage of the siege continues to bring the best and worst of mainstream and social media in Australia.
Editorial
WHATEVER the deranged motivation behind yesterday’s siege in Sydney’s Martin Place, the outrage, possibly the work of a terrorist copying the methods of violent Islamic extremists, achieved three outcomes.
First, it drew almost instantaneous global coverage. Second, it crippled the centre of our largest city, 10 days before Christmas. And third, it planted a new wariness in ordinary Australians going about their daily lives. For many of us, the crisis made the realities of terrorism, whatever its source, hit home hard.
Click here to read the complete editorial at The Australian.
In between thousands of tweets, hours of live broadcast and hundreds of web pages, some facts have proven to be inaccurate and misleading, and some angles had dangerous Islamophobic overtones.
Early on the gunman made the hostages hold up a black flag with Arabic writing at the cafe window. Many reports that followed had angles, which alarmed some Sydney social media users who joined a hashtag campaign #IllRideWithYou. The campaign is meant to show solidarity with Sydney’s Muslims who might feel uncomfortable taking public transport following the cafe siege. The hashtag has been used hundreds thousands of times and gone viral all over the world.
Sloppy Reporting
The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper published an article that said “Monday’s siege in the CBD has seen a number of myths circulating on social media and in the press.”
Keith Fitzgerald, a crisis negotiator expert, after seeing the front page of a special edition newspaper, asked journalists in Australia to condemn the Daily Telegraph:
2GB radio presenter Ray Hadley also created several rumours live and on air during his daily show, According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the disinformation in this article could create race-based discrimination. The ironic Twitter user ‘The Daily Rupert‘ tweets:
And some headlines could raise unnecessary panic such as the one published on Twitter by an ABC News reporter:
#IllRideWithYou
Chris Graham, the founder of the New Matilda blog wrote ten predictions of what is going to happen in the aftermath of the siege. The first is the “possible raise of violence directed against Muslims, in particular Muslim women”.
On Twitter a blogger 33-year-old Tessa Kum created the hashtag #illridewithyou in solidarity with Muslims who might feel uncomfortable riding public transport in Australia after the Sydney siege was reported with racial undertones.
This solidarity movement started after a journalist tweeted a screen grab from a Facebook update posted as soon as the siege started by a Sydney-based teacher and dancer named Rachel, regarding her experience on a Sydney train:
She said ”a Muslim Woman sitting besides her silently removed her hijab because she didn´t want to show signs of her religion for fear of misplaced retaliation from commuters in relations to the siege situation that was occurring in Martin Place, Sydney.”
SirTessa RTed Michael James tweet and and tweeted:
As the campaign took off the teacher and dancer whose Facebook post gave the impetus for the hashtag tweeted:
Siege Selfies
The police evacuated the area and created safe distance zones for the media, but these safe areas were also full of people that wanted to watch close all the action as if they were watching a movie. Though it was a very real and dangerous situation some even took selfies and posted them on Twitter:
Aisha Dow from the newspaper The Age, writes “Cheerful onlookers have been snapping mobile phone “selfies” at the perimeters of the Sydney siege as a still unknown number of hostages remain prisoners of a gunman.”
During the afternoon five hostages managed to flee from Lindt Café, it is not clear if the gunman freed them or they managed to run away.
17 hostages were caught up in the siege, four were injured. Besides the gunman, two hostages were killed caught in the cross fire.
The Lone Gunman
By Craig Mclean
Via The Conversation
Police have now confirmed that the siege in Sydney has ended after the cafe was stormed by officers, but questions about how it happened, what the motives were and how Australia should respond are just beginning. The man who held up to 30 people hostage in a cafe in the central business district is dead, along with two other people. He has been identified as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee who moved to Australia in 1996.
Monis was on bail after being accused of being an accessory to the murder of his former wife. He reportedly faced numerous sexual assault charges. At this stage it is not clear whether Monis was acting alone, as part of a larger operation, or indeed whether he was simply using the symbols and language of radical Islamists to gain attention for himself.
Click here to read the complete article at The Conversation.
Within Sydney’s Muslim community he is believed to be an outsider. Reports suggest he had been sidelined by Shia leaders, who had urged federal police to investigate him over his claims to be an “ayatollah”, or leading cleric. Reports from his blog, which has now been taken down, suggest he converted to Sunni Islam last week. He also reportedly claimed on his blog to be an expert in astrology, numerology, meditation and black magic.
Manuel Ribeiro is Portuguese Language Editor @Global Voices. He tweets at @manuelribeiro
He is a presenter of “Voz Portuguesa”, Portuguese language radio program @VoxFM community radio – Australia and is freelance reporter and radio correspondent from Australia and Timor-Leste @DW radio – Africa.
This article first appeared in Global Voices. Click here to go to the original.
