Attacks on Indians down under

Hmmm. Wonder who was scuffling, or was the force of the law against the peaceful demonstration of Indian students? It sounds so...

"Indian students in Melbourne also highlighted the issue at a peaceful sit-in which ended in scuffles as it was broken by police on Monday.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday had assured India that perpetrators of the recent assaults on Indian citizens here will be met "with full force of the law".

I agree with this view written by an Aussie, Prince

"Australia may be far away physically, but it seems to have too much in common with the United States. Both countries affirm that their forebears had a right to kill and destroy(native populations). Both countries have(had) political leaders who accentuate the worst aspect of their nations' histories. The people produced by those histories are never as good as they claim to be."

The Indians injured in the US I'm guessing are victims of crime...people around here are much more afraid of an influx of Mexicans than Indians

We've been discussing this on one of Msolga's threads...and whether it is actually aimed against Indians or Indians feeling especially picked on by "normal" street crime.

Because I have NEVER been aware of any anti-Indian feeling here......doesn't mean it doesn't exist, lord only knows what racist people are going to feel and act on...and neo-nazis and suchlike trash etc pick on Asians in general...but I had thought our Indian community very well accepted. And, it isn't as though there are enough of them to form a visible rich or politically dominant group, which has led them to be targeted in other Pacific and South East Asian nations. (Similarly with Chinese.)


Mind you, my own city appeared to have an outbreak of similar crimes against Indians in a couple of suburbs a few years ago.....suburbs which also had very large populations of people from the Middle East and Africa, who did not appear (at least in the media) to be similarly targeted.


I agree with:



by the way....there just seems to be something wrong with the "soul" of countries with such histories...at least until the past is fully acknowledged. We were on our way, until Howard took over in 1996......now seem to be struggling towards some kind of proper acknowledgement again. Too slowly.

Though I dunno...xenophobia seems to be a reaction in humans that is kind of basic, and most countries trumpet their goodness and superiority. In my experience most Asian countries, for instance, are far more racist than either the US or Oz...they are simply not encouraging lots of folk to migrate to their countries so that it becomes extremely evident....except when there are massacres of Chinese, for example, in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia...(and black students, for example, in China have been exposed to murder and beatings, as well as racist harassment.)

People kind of feel that the US does that more than anybody (you guys have a very visible patriotism "thing") but this may be an artefact of a culture which gets around and dominates media. I sadly see flags and suchlike crap seeming to proliferate here.

I think another factor for Oz is feeling kind of alone far away from similar countries, with massive crowded Asian populations all around, and a lot of empty (albeit pretty useless for agriculture) land. Being attacked by Japan didn't help. I think that has bred a kind of fear...which used to be fanned by some political parties...and still is occasionally by loonies like Pauline Hanson. But she found an underbelly to exploit, so it's all there.

And not just in whites!

I was at a school the other day, dealing with a little fella of South American indigenous extraction. His school is a major melting pot...lots of Africans, Aboriginal Australian kids, Middle eastern kids etc etc.

One of his crimes was racist taunts against some Indian children....which he had got into with his Aboriginal mates.

Then he and they got into a massive rumble with a group of African kids...because tthe African kids were telling the Aboriginal kids that they weren't proper black people, they were just dirty!

Then all the boys appeared to unite to make a little Moslem refugee girl's life horrible by making explicit sexual statements to her (they all knew she would be especially distressed by this because she wears the veil.)


Mind you...to what extent that is racism (though my little fella, who had spent most of his life in Arab countries, had certainly been subjected to lots of it in schools there!) and to what extent it is creative use of colour and religion where glasses, chubbiness, freckles, being bad at sport etc. would previously have been used is a whole 'nother question!

very thoughtful post D...thanks

i dont see these attacks as essentially racist. They appear to be (to me) opportunistic.
The other things I see is... resistance to change, fear of the unknown and, as with most group attacks on a pecieved weaker target highlighting the lack of self esteem on the attackers part.