Racism Alive and Flourishing Down Under

There seems to be no stopping the series of unprovoked attacks on South Asians, mostly Indians, in Australia. Where the immigrant population tags these attacks as being 'racist', the Australian authorities have been refusing to see it in that angle. What started as sporadic cases of mild and isolated violence has now gained the form of a chain reaction, with attacks and counter attacks from both the sides, and the immigrant and student population mostly being denied justice in the end. Although racism seems almost extinct from the US and the west, it seems to be thriving down under.

While Australian authorities have been insisting that the country is safe to study, work and live, the recent escalation in these 'racist' strikes have caught them napping and in an embarrassing situation. As recently as yesterday, a group of six South Asians were denied entry in a bar in Melbourne. "We had gone to the bar to throw a farewell party for one of our friends, Abhishek Aggarwal, who is about to leave for India", said Sujan Pathak, a Nepalese student who was part of the group containing 3 Indians and 3 Nepalese students. This is the third such incident in Melbourne within a week, which houses a large number of Indian and other South Asian students. In the first week of January, 21-year-old student Nitin Garg was stabbed to death by unidentified assailants here, becoming the first victim of such assaults this year. Another Indian youth, Ranjodh Singh, was killed in New South Wales last month.

Racially motivated attacks on South Asians hit a new high last year with over a hundred cases reported in 2009 as against only 17 reported in 2008. There's been a sharp reaction coming in from some of these countries with people getting on streets to protest these constant attacks on their fellow citizens. An Indian right-wing group has threatened to disrupt the third edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 (IPL) cricket tournament starting in march, if Aussie players participate in it. Voicing outrage over the incidents, India has asked Australia to deliver on its promise of ensuring the security of Indian students. Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna summoned the Australian high commissioner to India to assess the volatile situation. He has asked the Aussie authorities to speed up the probe into these incidents and reiterated that the safety of the immigrant student population is Australia's responsibility, and they should not shy away from it.

Meanwhile, after officially denying it for over a year now, some senior Australian officials have finally agreed to the racial aspects in these attacks. Tom Calma, the outgoing Aboriginal social justice commissioner, believes some of the attacks were racially motivated. "I think some of them may be," Calma told ABC Radio. "There is an indirect racism, if not direct racism, and it affects those people who are the indigenous people or the ethnic minorities", AAP quoted him as saying on Friday. This is the very first admission of a racial angle to these attacks by an official of such a high stature.