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Indians staying off Australian streets over fear of racial attacks | Several Indian students in Australia have said that they are too afraid to walk the streets at night following
reports of repeated hate crimes against the community. They said that they feared
becoming targets of racially motivated violence. "We are careful not to walk the
streets after dark. We are not safe because there are people here, who think Indians
should not be in Australia," The Daily Telegraph quoted Bharat Chauhan, an
accounting
student in Australia, as saying. Another Indian national Shraddha Patel said that
she came to Australia in 2008 to take advantage of the better study opportunities,
but emphasized that some locals were insecure about their jobs being taken up
by Indian students. "They think that Indians are here to take their jobs," Patel
said. According to police, 1,447 Indians were victims of reported crime in the
year ending July 2008 in Melbourne, but the Federation of Indian Students of
Australia
(FISA) believes the true figure is several times higher. A string of incidents
last year had triggered angry street protests in Sydney and Melbourne, where the
victims included Baljinder Singh, who was stabbed with a screwdriver as he handed
over his wallet to two assailants. The killing of 21-year-old Indian student Nitin
Garg last weekend has thrust concern about the safety of the community in Australia
back into the spotlight - straining diplomatic ties between the two countries.
In the latest incident, a 29-year-old Indian man was admitted to Melbourne's Alfred
hospital in a serious condition after four men allegedly attacked and set him
on fire last night. |
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