Thursday, February 11, 2010

Indian students, racism and a debate spiralling out of control

Says Paul Austin in The Age Opinion Column:
"John Brumby has lost control of the violence-against-Indians debate. That's scary for a premier who likes to be in control. Scarier still that it's happening in an election year.

Brumby wants to play down the idea that the recent spate of bashings and stabbings of Indians is evidence that racism is on the rise in Victoria.

He adopts this position for three main reasons. First, and fundamentally, he thinks the idea is wrong and repugnant.

But there are also financial and political considerations.

The multibillion-dollar international student industry is a big earner for Victoria - a state not blessed with mineral resources like Queensland and Western Australia - and, naturally, Brumby wants to protect it.

And the political interest of any premier is best served if their community has a self-image as a safe, welcoming, tolerant place.

The problem for Brumby is that a growing list of people are refusing to adopt his sotto voce approach. The danger for the Premier is that as more people speak out about the problem of racism in Victoria, and accuse the government of an inadequate response, he will be seen as unrealistic and isolated."

Meanwhile Police keep lid on stats for Indians :
"POLICE Chief Commissioner Simon Overland has admitted there are ''limitations'' in the statistics he and Premier John Brumby have been relying on to inform the public about Indians as victims of crime - and he won't release them.

He said information about a victim's race was based on a subjective assessment of their appearance - and Indians were included in the broad category of ''south Asian appearance''. Such a category could also include those from countries other than India such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Mr Overland is refusing to release the statistics on the grounds that they are ''subjective and open to interpretation''."
Update (Feb.13th)
The politics of violence by Sushi Das
Brumby, Baillieu clash over state's crime level
From Victoria in a state of denial
"Professor Marginson, who has studied similar targeting of foreign students in other countries, said Victoria had been far slower to recognise the race issue than was New Zealand when it faced attacks on Chinese students and the US with students of Middle Eastern origin.

Mr Overland said recently that the police had been aware of the unusually high level of attacks on Indians for the past two years. However, it was only when the issue received widespread coverage in the middle of last year that the Brumby government and the police launched a series of visible initiatives to try to stop the attacks. Since then, measures have been steadily introduced, ranging from sentencing laws for hate crimes, a 24-hour student care service and a targeting of hot spots. Yet Mr Brumby has not given Mr Overland what he needs most to combat the problem: a surge in police numbers to enable officers to be stationed permanently at night at train stations, on trains and in the streets of poorer suburbs where the attacks are taking place. Mr Brumby last year announced he would lift police numbers by 120 officers, barely enough to combat the general rise in violent crime across Melbourne, much less crimes specifically directed against Indian students.

"The chief commissioner is clearly not getting the resources to manage the situation," Mr Gupta said. "I think this will come back to haunt the government at the next election.""

3 comments:

Joe Pinto said...

My dear Gaddeswarup,

I am happy to have stumbled on your blog, while I was looking through the rediffmail tips on "How not to be attacked in Australia".

I wrote about the attacks on my blog too. See: http://sangatizuzay.blogspot.com/

I am also glad a senior person like you is so concerned about this issue and is frank with your views. Please keep up the good work.

Peace and love,
- Joe.

gaddeswarup said...

Sushi Das has many thoughtful articles in The Age. I explained some of my opinions in the comments section of a post by Dilip D'souza:
http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2010/01/ranjodh-nitin-jaspreet-raju.html
I think that racism bit is partly overblown due to the greed and stupidity of the Victorian goverment. There is some racism ( but it is better than when I came in 1988, and no worse than the casteism practiced by Indians, even those living here. You should hear some of the Indians talking about the aboriginies) but I think the main problem is some of the low income suburbs neglected by the government. We had an Indian visitor last month and travelled hundreds of miles in Victoria without facing any racist problems, but if one enters one of these suburbs it can happen easily. Unfortunately many Indian students come with meagre financial resources and are located in such suburbs. As with many of these problems, it is a mixture of causes I think, not just plain racism. It is developing in to an election issue and I hope that this publicity will not lead to more racism.

Jince said...

This is a very interesting blog and so i like to visit your blog again and again. Keep it up.

Alan
http://www.rupeemail.in/rupeemail/invite.do?in=NTc2MzA2JSMlSjZibEFYbWs0OXZlVjhHUktUc3pOdUxDYQ==