NEWCASTLE, Australia– Muslim groups in Australia on Friday criticized the disparity in the police response to two knife attacks in Sydney this month, saying it had created a perception of double standards and further alienated the country’s minority Muslim community.
Australia’s National Council of Imams said an attack at a Bondi Junction shopping center was “quickly considered a mental health issue”, while the stabbing of a Christian bishop in a Sydney church two days later was “classified as a terrorist act almost immediately.”
“The differences in the treatment of two recent violent incidents are stark,” council spokesperson Ramia Abdo Sultan said in a statement sent to the Alliance of Australian Muslims and the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network.
“These disparities in response create a perception of a double standard in judicial and law enforcement processes,” he said.
A 16-year-old boy is accused of repeatedly stabbing Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and a priest at Christ the Good Shepherd Church on April 15, two days after the Bondi Junction attack, in which six people were killed and a dozen others wounded. seriously injured. by a lone offender with a history of mental illness.
The boy was charged last week with committing a terrorist act, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Five teenagers aged between 14 and 17 have also been charged with terrorism offenses in relation to the church stabbings. They were among seven arrested in a series of highly publicized raids in Sydney’s southwest in a major Joint Counter Terrorism Team operation.
The boys, accused of following a violent extremist religious ideology, appeared in a Sydney youth court on Thursday, with only the 14-year-old being granted bail. He was still in custody Friday pending an appeal.
Sultan called for an investigation into the processes that led to the police raids to ensure transparency and accountability within the judicial system and prevent the marginalization of different ethnic and religious groups.
“We must also address the problematic and long-standing issue of racial and religious discrimination, which has been part of the social fabric for decades,” Sultan said. “The presumption that terrorism is intrinsically linked to religion is not only inaccurate but also harmful.”
New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns agreed it was important that terrorism allegations were framed correctly, but rejected any need for changes.
“The truth of the matter is that in some cases, and only in some cases, where there is terrorist activity, it is a result of religious extremism,” Minns told a news conference in Sydney on Friday.
Meanwhile, a University of Sydney student has settled his defamation claim against Australia’s Channel Seven for wrongly identifying him as the shooter in the Bondi Junction shopping center attack.
Channel Seven had falsely identified 20-year-old student Benjamin Cohen as the attacker after he was named in several posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Police later identified the attacker as Joel Cauchi, 40, who was shot and killed by the first responding police officer.
“Seven accepts that the identification was a serious error and that these claims were completely false and unsubstantiated,” Seven CEO Jeff Howard said in a statement reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.
He said Seven “apologizes to you for the harm you and your family have suffered as a result of Seven’s statements about you.”
Other details of the agreement have been kept confidential.