Unfortunate Circumstances

Australia has been on the butt of a lot of racist criticism in the past, sometimes rightfully so, but recently there have been a spate of attacks on people of Indian descent which seems to originate from the suburb of Harris Park. In response, the Indian community has banded together in protest, leading marches to raise awareness about this travesty.

However, this has unfortunately degraded into a race war where the Indians feel they are being targeted by the rest of Australia and feel they must rain retribution. Several Lebanese men have been attacked during the Indian protest even though their guilt is to be determined; the Indians actions are only adding fuel to the proverbial fire.

I have heard quite a lot of comments from various sources regarding this issue and do believe that a lot of things that have been said are plain ignorant.

“Our people don’t say nothing until water goes up over the top… Police won’t do anything, but we’ve got to do something.”

No shit police won’t do anything if you don’t tell them about it. I have utmost respect for police officers who put their lives on the line in order to secure our neighbourhoods, but if they are not made aware of these crimes then they cannot respond! The earlier these crimes are reported the earlier police could work to solve these issues.

“There are thousands of people, thousands of Indians – international students every day robbed at Harris Park (railway) station”

I also find the above statement immensely hard to believe given the fact that the population of Harris Park is only in the thousands. To have thousands of people being assaulted in that one suburb would mean that almost everybody that lived there would be assaulted once a day. Imagine you just walked out of your house on your way to work and get mugged. Imagine it happening EVERY DAY. You wouldn’t even get this sort of treatment in prison let alone in Australia!

Are the police doing enough to protect citizens in Harris Park? Probably not. Has this event blown out of proportion? I’d say so. Considering the fact that the typical Indian lies in a demographic which seem to be easy targets for attackers according to police.

“The police are telling the truth when they describe the attacks as largely motivated by opportunism, because Indian students work late at night, live in lower-cost neighbourhoods, and are regarded as soft targets.”

People need to understand that although some of the fault lies with the way police deal with crime in trouble spots, the victims have to accept that the area they live in are not the safest and that these risks are escalated later at night. I am not saying that it is the victim’s fault, but rather that they should take proper precautions when travelling through certain suburbs. Or even work with police to find solutions which increase public safety.

Frankly speaking, there is a lot of shit that police officers go through and they don’t need the angry protests to encourage them to do their jobs. When they get out of hand it wastes already scarce police resources when they could be better utilized in finding solutions to these problems. Instead of working against each other and pointing fingers, they should work with each other to raise public awareness and find schemes to improve safety amongst Indian students.