For long I have been clarifying that yes, there is significant soft racism and discrimination against Indians in Australia, but no, that doesn't mean Aussies kill Indians. (True, some of that might now be changing – see my blog post here. And it is true that if people like Kyle Sandilands are not ejected from their jobs for slandering India, then hard racism might get a boost.) 

CRIMES against Indians living in Australia are motivated by opportunity rather than racial hatred, a new study has found, with foreign students no more likely to be assaulted on Melbourne or Sydney streets than the general population.

 

An Australian Institute of Criminology study of crimes against foreign students found they were much more likely to be robbed but concluded this was because of working in high-risk jobs such as service stations, taxis and convenience stores.

 

AIC director Adam Tomison cautioned that further research was needed on the motivations of the crimes, but said "nothing we have found lends support to the view that Indian students have been singled out primarily for racial reasons". "Robbery is an opportunistic offence that is led by a range of factors, including whether people are seen as easy targets or not," Dr Tomison told The Australian.

 

"There may be some racial motivation to seeing overseas students as easy targets, but that isn't the same as racial vilification or racial hatred."

 

He said that none of the eight Indian student murders since 1990 had involved racial vilification or discrimination.

 

The report was commissioned by the federal government.

 

ASSAULT

The study analysed raw crime statistics from 13,200 student victims of crimes between 2005 and 2009 and found the rates of assault against international students, including Indian students, were lower or in line with the general population.

 

ROBBERY

The report found Indian students were much more likely to be threatened with robbery. In Victoria in 2009, male Indian students were almost three times more likely to be robbed compared with males generally, and more than five times more likely in NSW. About 25 per cent or robberies against Indian students occurred at retail locations, of which almost two-in-three were at service stations.

 

The report was greeted with scepticism by Gautam Gupta, founder of the Federation of International Students of Australia, who warned it presented an incomplete picture and shouldn't be used as an excuse to dismiss racism as problem.

 

Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes said the research did not cast any light on the extent of racial motivation in the crimes. "There are significant issues with international students under-reporting crime and violence," he said.

 

Criminologist Paul Wilson of Bond University in Queensland said the raw data needed to be followed up with interviews of victims and perpetrators. [Source]

Related posts:

1. Soft racism against Indians in Australia, re-confirmed
2. Continuing evidence of soft racism in Australia
3. Indians killed in Australia in allegedly racist splurge in violence
4. Evidence that hard (violent) racism is fermenting in Australia
5. Soft racism in the West – the last frontier for equal freedom
6. Do Indians have a right to permanent residency in Australia?
7. The mad rush of Indians to get into “racist” Australia!
8. Shameless Indian press doesn’t apologise to Australia
9. A precise measure of racism in Australia
10. Is India the world’s last great bastion of racism?

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