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Many Sikhs among Indian students
under attack in Australia
NOW
AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES WARN OWN GOVT, RISK LOSING STUDENTS
WSN Network
 MELBOURNE:
Anumber of Indian students, including many Sikhs, continue to reel
under madcap violent racist attacks in Australia, triggering panic
among the Diaspora even as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called his
Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on weekend to apologize for
attacks. Latest victim is a Sikh youth Nardeep Singh (21) hailing
from Ludhiana.
The case of a
student with severe burns and another with stab wounds hogged the
Indian media, and worried Australian universities on Wednesday went
so far as to warn that Indian students would go elsewhere if their
safety in Australia was not assured.
"We need to
respond with more than spin," Universities Australia spokesman Daryl
Le Grew said. "We need to acknowledge there's a problem." A large
number of students are from
Punjab.
The bashings and
muggings in Melbourne received wide coverage in the Indian media,
Punjab MPs have repeatedly met PM Manmohan Singh and Indian external
affairs minister SM Krishna worked the channels but attacks
continued nevertheless.
Protesting
students in
Melbourne under
the banner of Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA),
staged angry sit-ins and marched but the police are merely seeing
the muggings as the work of ordinary criminals who see foreign
students as easy targets and not motivated by racial hatred.
More than 93,000
Indian students are in
Australia, many
work their way through studies, earning from bit jobs at petrol
stations, convenience stores or as taxi drivers. (Some estimates put
the number of Indian students far higher.) This makes them
vulnerable as they are often on the streets and on public transport
late at night.
These students
represent about 18 per cent of all foreign students and are worth 2
billion Australian dollars ($1.6 billion) to the economy.
Australia is a
favoured destination for Punjabi students and some 2,000 IELTS
centers are working in Punjab. Average student pays 10,000
Australian dollars as fee, thus hitting a total figure for India at
Rs 10,000 crore. Punjab possibly accounts for a little less than
half this business.
Australia has
now set up a taskforce led by former elite soldier Duncan Lewis to
co-ordinate a response to the assaults.
"Clearly, we are
just going to have to lift the effort to try and deal with the
sensitivity and the way we are demonstrating this is of concern to
us," Trade Minister Simon Crean said.
Meanwhile, angry
continues to seethe as reports came about attack on Nardeep Singh by
a group of males in Frankston in
Melbourne.
The nursing
student at
Chisholm College
was stopped, attackers asked for money and then slashed him with a
Stanley knife, Victoria Police said. He has been in
Australia
for just two months.
Many Indian
cities have seen angry protests in support of students in
Australia.
3
June 2009
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