Australia is a country with strong cultural pressures to conform; Aussies are rewarded for fitting in rather than standing out in all areas except for athletics. It’s known as the tall poppy syndrome, as in the tall poppy gets mowed down. In the USA, there’s a different saying, one about squeaky wheels, and I’m glad to say that desis in Australia seem to be following the American model. 
This weekend, at least 2,000 Indians protested in Melbourne, blocking traffic on a busy street for almost 20 hours to protest the large number of crimes and assaults against Indians in the last year and the lack of police interest or response. The demonstrations started at Royal Melbourne Hospital where Sravan Kumar Theerthala was lying comotose after having been stabbed with a screwdriver at a party.
Latest available police figures say 1,447 people of Indian origin were robbed or assaulted in Victoria state in 2007-2008, although students from the country say they have risen since then. Many of the most serious cases occurred in the western suburbs of the state capital Melbourne, where police estimate Indians account for about 30 percent of all robbery and assault victims. [link]Police have denied any racial motivation, saying the students were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have said the crimes were “opportunistic”, with Indian students seen as “soft targets”. [link]
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p>In addition to the protests in Melbourne, there was a strong diplomatic response. Manmohan Singh has called the Australian PM, and the Indian and Australian Foreign Ministers are holding talks on the matter. The diplomatic engagement was accompanied by a vigorous thapad by BigB who turned down a honorary doctorate offered by the Queensland University of Technology, saying “Under the prevailing circumstances I find it inappropriate at this juncture, to accept this decoration.”
This is a serious issue for Australia because it makes $15 billion (AU) from foreign students, 40% of whom come from India and China (90,000 Indian students and 130,000 Chinese students). Foreign students are the third largest export earner behind coal and iron ore.
Right now, news of these attacks has widespread coverage in India and both governments are threatening to discourage future students from coming to Australia. This is a credible threat, a few years ago the New Zealand government failed to take racist violence against Chinese students seriously and they lost all their Chinese students as a consequence.
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p>As a result of this escalation the Australian authorities have changed their tune considerably, and they are now bringing in the PM’s national security advisor to formulate policy:
Australia said Tuesday the former head of its elite Special Air Service (SAS) regiment will lead a task force examining attacks on Indian students … Duncan Lewis, now the government’s national security adviser, chaired the task force’s first meeting Tuesday and would coordinate Australia’s response to the assaults. [link]
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p>The government is also considering enacting hate crime legislation that would consider prejudicial motivation as a factor in sentencing.
I think it’s pretty sad that it took this much diplomatic pressure, and some outright hysteria by the Indian media, before the Australian authorities would take the issue seriously. That said, based on my experience with hate crimes in the USA, the copycat attacks (including vandalism of a Gurdwara on Monday and a slashing yesterday) should die down as soon as perpetrators realize that the government will be enforcing the law vigorously. I’ve got family in Australia, I’d like to feel that they’re safe.
This is precisely the primary problem. can you imagine a police commissioner anywhere in the world shrugging off an increase in crime!!! The question is what is the Vic Police doing to reduce crime and especially crime on desis. It is in situations like this that the old saying of “god did not make all men equal, mr colt did” comes to mind.
thank you everyone for your kind words.
to the crow eating dole bludger – dont tell me you live in elizabeth 😉
most desis love shane warne and yet shane warne is considered a typical bogan – “white trash” in Australia. go figure 🙂
Australia has a huge race issue – make no mistake about it. It has an even more severe law and order problem. And this is true across sydney and melbourne. This maybe due to the heritage of australia – being hard on criminals is tough when when your ancestors were shipped for minor infractions.
There are 5 mainstream channels in Australia – not pay. ABC1, Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 10, SBS. ABC and SBS are funded by the tax payer while the other three are private. the only channel where one will non white skin is on SBS. earlier there used to be a darkish lady news reader on ABC but now no one. No non white face on any of the soap operas. the longest one has been “neighbours” which depicts life in a leafy eastern suburb of melbourne. can you believe in a country that so loudly proclaims itself to be mulitcultural there are no non white faces – not even the chinese who have been here for 150 years. Not just a non white face – you will never hear a non aussie accent on TV or any of the Radio stations. Barring SBS of course. It is just not on – dont tell me that there are no qualified candidates. For cricket we hear an overseas expert commentator on radio and have one on TV. Happy to be proven wrong.
this is largely due to numbers of desis in Oz.
. The Governor of Victoria is a Sri Lankan born doctor of mixed Burger ancestery. But otherwise none, but most desi here are migrants give a generation or so and you will have them in Politics. NSW had a government filled with Italians (mostly children of post war migrants).
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_Policy
melbourne desi
“For a racist a black african / an aboriginal / desi are all of the same class – non human and hence dont deserve the same respect. No need to distinguish between the three. “
Hmmm. When it comes to public safety, access to economic opportunity, etc. I don’t think there is any need to distinguish between the three.
“cronulla was partially a fightback to the pack rapes by the Lebanese gangs. So was Camden.â€
Cronulla was a riot against anybody of ‘middle eastern appearance’ – including some desis who were unfortunate enough to live there. (It’s hard to see how beating up women is a fightback against pack rapes by anybody – but perhaps you see these things differently?) Camden is a clear case of just not wanting an Islamic school in the area because they don’t like people who are different from them. (ie non-white. A desi group trying to set up a temple in the area would get exactly the same treatment, you’re kidding yourself if you think Camden would differentiate, or that their prejudice is based on anything fair or considered.)
I agree with you. All I am saying is that the backlash has been brewing for a while due to the unnecessary PC approach of the state. vigilantes come to play when the state is ineffective. Watching the Lebanese gangs harass women on the beaches of Australia is sickening.
Hey melb desi…
Don’t live in Elizabeth, but my GP’s there 😉
I agree that the law-order issue is quite serious in the NSW/VIC states. Media Mike, the SA premier, is starting to clamp down really hard on crime here, especially the bikie crime. Could that also be one reason that crime rates have gone up? Maybe the police in NSW, Victoria and SA were concentrating more on the Bikie problems, considering how much the outlaw gangs have penetrated into Melbourne’s social life? There was a shootout in the CBD couple of years ago yeah?
From a personal experience, I don’t believe Australia is a racist country, but I have met several insensitive skips around. Maybe it’s just that the relative population size of Adelaide vis-a-vis Melb/Syd…
Actually I’ll be moving to Sydney next week to join work….looking forward to living in Chatswood (you got any information on that) 🙂
we are in agreement.
My experience is the opposite. At an individual level Australians are great but at an institutional level whole different story. see the hazing of former Telstra CEO for his mexican heritage.
no clue about sydney besides being there a few times as a tourist.
Australia is the country which until the 1970s was forcibly breeding the black out of aborigines. To argue that Australia is not racist is hilarious.
What is more ridiculous is why Indian students are injecting 7 billion dollars into Australia’s economy. There are all these Indian PhDs in America — why can’t they invest in education in India? Why aren’t Indian students putting those billions into India’s higher education system? There are more Indians in Australia now because after America tightened its borders and made getting visas harder over the past few years, Indians have flocked to Australia, sometimes under the belief that immigrating to Australia is easier too. That is, switching to student to immigrant is easier. We need to get rid of this mentality and have Indians want to stay in India. Instead of protesting in Melbourne, how about protesting about the lack of decent education in India?
Xan, if you’re talking about the stolen generation policy yes that is a sad sad story indeed. I am not aruging that Australia is devoid of any racial abuse.
melb desi, to be fair, Sol Trujillo, screwed up Telstra big time. Granted that Rudd’s “adios” wasn’t really the best goodbye call, but Trujillo wasn’t a knight in shining armour here….he got paid 31 million to put Telstra in a worse position than before, even though promising much more. however i agree with your msg #108 that there is too much unnecessary PC.
I don’t understand why Indians go to Australia in the first place.
Its quite clear that they are not welcome and never will be.
Let the whites and Lebanese fight – we should stay away.
Like PK said, it was a bit rich of Sol to take off with $30 mil for doing not much at all, then complain that people were being racist. It was more a case of people just not liking him than being racist.
PK- Chatswood is Asian central, it’s awesome =)
Some native Australian friends of mine describe their country as “low class”.
I have also heard that UK sent a lot of its prisoners there to work and settle back in the day. Perhaps this accounts for something?
I don’t get why Indians leave India anymore. India is coming up and there are good Universities there. Why leave? For what?
Well, a young lawyer in Sydney makes a lot more $$ than a young lawyer in Delhi, to take an example. So, that would be a draw. Also, there’s a shortage of seats at decent universities in India.
I have also heard that UK sent a lot of its prisoners there to work and settle back in the day. Perhaps this accounts for something?
that’s ugly.
We had this s**t take place viciously in UK in the 60s and 70s. Our Indian/Pakistani Governmenst were too weak willed to care. Also to be fair India was not that important. Now that China and India are, maybe the NZ example will start showing these guys not pick on brown. I suppose 9/11 and all that has not helped us..
I went to OZ twice and never experinced any of this..but I know many in the UK, esp Black Community who consider Aussies racist..Also when I was there it was clear thay disliked Asians. In UK that means Indian-Pakistannis-Sri lankan et al. In OZ it means Chinese..
Well the cream of Indian students don’t even consider Australia. High fee in Oz Univs is inverse with its intelligence threshold. Most, but not all of the kids studying there are from loaded parties, which is why the Indian media is bringing it up in a big way. Its funny whe Injuns get all riled up about being treated like ‘aliens’ in another country, when they so frequently engage in such behavior with marginalized groups within India. Racism is egregious everywhere but cribbing about it to the point of overkill can be Ironic.
“There are 5 mainstream channels in Australia – not pay. ABC1, Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 10, SBS. ABC and SBS are funded by the tax payer while the other three are private. the only channel where one will non white skin is on SBS. earlier there used to be a darkish lady news reader on ABC but now no one. No non white face on any of the soap operas. the longest one has been “neighbours” which depicts life in a leafy eastern suburb of melbourne. can you believe in a country that so loudly proclaims itself to be mulitcultural there are no non white faces – not even the chinese who have been here for 150 years. Not just a non white face – you will never hear a non aussie accent on TV or any of the Radio stations. Barring SBS of course. It is just not on – dont tell me that there are no qualified candidates”
Ironically if you switch TV on in the UK 60% of newsreaders are Desi.
True. But the cost of living is less in Delhi AND domestic labor is cheap. Many of the Delhi-ites I know have cooks, maids, drivers and nannies.
Why? Behavioural patterns often repeat themselves through the generations. They don’t have to, but they often do.
Irony …. The above statement in a thread about possible “racism” !!!
—
Who could possibly play the race card with my above statement? It has nothing to do with ethnicity or skin color but BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS.
I was in a jail just last night visiting a friend and I tell you……….. its a generational thing by and large (the jail folks will tell you that!)
You must have lived a very sheltered life if you think its not.
I was in tears when I heard about these attacks….in this day and age, you would think there would be tolerance…My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the Indian students in Australia. These attacks on innocent Indian students demonstrate the grave threat of ignorance, narrow mindedness and bigotry. I stand with these Indian students, whose strength and determination will prove far more resilient than the hateful ideology that led to these attacks.
The thing is, we don’t know if there IS any ideology behind this or not because the Aussie police are not releasing information about who did these crimes.
“I have also heard that UK sent a lot of its prisoners there to work and settle back in the day. Perhaps this accounts for something?
that’s ugly.”
Eh Razib. Aren’t you a believer in genetic determinism. It isn’t too far to go to believe certain personality traits are genetic. Please correct me, I always like to believe people can be changed. Is there no likelihood that certain ethnicities are genetically proclived to be ‘agressive’.
It’s not a matter of genetics at this point but of generational patterns of behaviour due to social conditioning.
They never do, the descriptions are always generic but if you live in Australia long enough you can learn to read the unwritten, for instance MOMEA = Lebanesse gangs. If there is one minor in the group the rest are not identified. Here you have one of the attacker named.
Yeah but, didn’t the desis attacked say the dudes who did it were black?
In the link I posted, his attackers were black, asian & whites
or, as they say, lebs.
Wait, the attackers aren’t Lebanese? OH Noez. And add to that pain, even if in my wildest dreams they had been Lebanese, they would probably have been Christian not Muslim Lebs? OMFG. Where do I need to go now to bash me some Muslims, dang it? Can I blame India’s environment disaster on Islamicists? Sure I can, my tin foil on mah head sez I can lulz.
Sorry guys; the attackers in several attacks were Lebanese; see, e.g., the Times of India piece I linked to above. Obviously, the Lebanese gangsters aren’t 100% of the attackers; but stop denying they’re a part of the problem for desis in Oz.
Nom
It is amusing to see you get so hyper about the Lebanese thing. Specially since the emphasis here is on nationality and not religion. Nobody here had even suggested that it is a Hindu-Muslim thing and yet you started with your ummah gumma rantings. I suggest that you re-attach the ‘Pakistan’ to your handle (like in the other thread)- it suits your personality and your views.
Cheers
obviously they aren’t, now, eh? i thought it was so obvious that the opposite was the case that it had to be posited right away, and even a “meme in the right wing blogosphere”, and oh, that the australian police are like the dregs of humanity, er, harvard faculty! well, good to know!
Sledgehammer, For the record, you are the one who was badly wrong–calling my question as to possibility of Lebanese gang involvement (which, it turns out, does exist) “idiocy.” The numerous links and references above speak for themselves; I’m done with you on this topic–you revealed your true stripes when you spoke so innaccurately in comment #9.
Forget Lebonese and Africans!
We all want to hear that the attackers are white Aussies from an anglo-saxon-protestant background. Only then will we feel vindacated!
no, you were right when you immediately identified asian “lebs” with your misdirecting comment in #22, and identifying the problem as the pervasive influence of pernicious harvard mentality 🙂
sledgehammer: al sharpton don’t so himself any favors when he kept accusing the poor white cop of rape. let it go. rob got you.
yep, asian lebs is it 🙂
and
Where exactly do you pull this sh*t from?
Indians are targeted as they are visible and regarded as soft targets. The attackers come from a range of backgrounds, but your desire to implicate this as some sort of Muslim conspiracy would be amusing if it weren’t so contemptible. melbourne desi, Zafar and others are correct in their assertions that the ineptitude of institutions is largely to blame for the poor response to these attacks.
And, FYI, the UK sent its convicts to Australia up until the late 1800s. It’s amazing, what with the transmission of criminal behaviour (you know, all those people who were transported for stealing bread and silk hankerchiefs) that Australia isn’t the organised crime centre of the world. Read some history, facts, that sort of thing, for a change mate.
Muslim conspiracy? I never mentioned the word Muslim even once in any of my posts and never once even thought about Muslims in connection with this topic.
Strange. Are you paranoid? Too much David Icke?
Just like I said
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/jun/08/indian-students-hit-back-stab-man-who-abused-them.htm
Interesting development, Raj_P–here’s more detail:
Looks like 2 hit-backs, one in Melbourne (the rediff report), and one in Sydney (the ABC report).
I believe racism is wrong regardless of the colour of skin of the racist. I think in the western world we have this binary that “white people” are suddenly racist against people of colour. People of colour we are not a monolithic group and there are also white people in Australia that are anti racist. I think one of the issues in Australia is immigration and I heard that there is a fear of “immigrants” changing Australia. Is this true? I read that 20% of Australia’s population is now not white. Australia is changing and I think the government of Australia can do more to deal with the changing population.
People of all races can be racist so I am not surprised if some of the attackers of the South Asians in Australian are indeed of African descent. On the website of racialicious that board discusses the racism between people of colour and I think this website can explore this issue a bit more. Does anyone know of the reasons why there is “discord” between the Middle Eastern communities, Africans, and South Asians in Australia?
some history lessons might be in order. Australia was a part of teh british empire for well over a hundred years before the convicts were shipped here. And the reason – loss of the USA. American historians gloss over the fact that the first convict colony was the USA. And there were more convicts sent to the USA than australia. 😉
As for the tensions between desis / middle eastersns / africans. many africans tend to be reffos ( refugees) who live off centrelink and hence have no compulsion to earn a decent living. an idle mind is the devils workshop…Criminal gangs in Australian tend to be packed with folks from the middle east – why this is so, I dont know.
It is true that Australia as a nation is soft on crime. To get one year for killing ones wife is ridiculous. Google it…
Umm, no. The British “claimed” the land in 1770s and started settling it as a penal colony in New South Wales 20 years later. The foundation of Australia is very different from that of America (at least Northern America, separate from the Spanish colonization of the South and or the Spanish and Dutch colonization of the Caribbean). The moral ideology of a penal colony that marked the beginnings of Australia/Tasmania (aka Van Deiman’s Land) is very different from that of the “City on the Hill,” Manifest Destiny that infuse the ideologies of early American colonization.
you are right. I confused the British with the Dutch 🙂 who landed on Australia in the early 17th century. although the part about USA being a convict colony is on the money. coz americans dont talk about the dirty linen does not mean it never happened. Georgia I believe was the primary destination.