From The Australian
Race-hate campaigner unmasked
Greg Roberts
August 22, 2005THE man behind a race-hate campaign in southern Queensland has been identified as a professional kangaroo shooter from the Darling Downs town of Crows Nest.
Police are tracking the movements of Jim Perren, 38, after anti-racism campaigners contacted them to register concern about his activities.
Mr Perren has posted hundreds of race-hate messages on the internet under the pseudonym stug111 — a type of German assault gun.
Right-wing extremists attached to a neo-Nazi group called the White Pride Coalition have targeted Toowoomba because 750 Sudanese refugees have been resettled in the Darling Downs city.
One family was forced to leave its home after being harassed, and refugees have been pelted with eggs and potatoes. Material being distributed includes brochures describing white women as the “world’s most endangered species”.
Inquiries by The Australian have established that Mr Perren is the White Pride Coalition’s chief operative in the region. He lives with his wife and two children on a rural property outside Crows Nest, 45km east of Toowoomba. When contacted by The Australian, Mr Perren did not deny his involvement in the race-hate campaign.
“If only it was that easy,” Mr Perren said. “I’ve got nothing to say.”
Mr Perren’s reluctance to be identified was confirmed by White Pride Coalition national spokesman Terry Davis, who said: “He wants to keep his head down.”
Mr Perren refers to Crows Nest in one of his internet postings: “Luck is on my side. I live in a small town that has two Asians and three coconuts. All the rest are white.”
In another posting, Mr Perren said Toowoomba had become a “staging point for the scum of the world to move into rural Queensland … they must be stopped”.
On the support of local churches for Sudanese refugees, he said: “When the muds they sponsor come and live here and start to rape and murder their grandchildren, maybe then they will wake up.”
Mr Perren has produced a sticker advertising a post office box in the Toowoomba suburb of Harlaxton. “Don’t let the Darling Downs become another Sydney,” it says.
Several Crows Nest residents, who asked not be identified, said Mr Perren’s white supremacist views were common knowledge around town. Mr Perren is active in the Returned Services League and works as a volunteer in Toowoomba’s Milne Bay Military Museum.
Museum curator Darren Abbott described Mr Perren as “fine and decent” and said support for groups such as the White Pride Coalition was widespread in Toowoomba.
“These guys are well-intentioned,” Mr Abbott said in comments that could
rattle the Defence Department, the museum’s owner. “They’re not extremists, they’re patriots standing up for their country. They say what the majority of Australians think.
“You just look at the Sudanese wandering around town with no jobs and you have to wonder. A real Australian is a Christian who will stand by our flag.”
Sudanese community leader Angelo Geng said the majority of Toowoomba residents were sympathetic towards the refugees. Mr Geng said many refugees were not working because it was hard to find jobs and they had yet to learn to speak English properly.
