January 11, 2010

Ranjodh, Nitin, Jaspreet, Raju

On December 27, an young man called Ranjodh Singh was murdered and his body partially burned. It was found on December 29.

On January 2, a young man called Nitin Garg was stabbed to death while walking to the restaurant where he worked.

On January 9, a young man called Jaspreet Singh was set on fire while parking his car and is in hospital with 15 per cent burns to his body.

On January 11, a young man called Raju was hacked to death while he walked home from the bakery where he worked.

Question: What connects these four crimes?

All four victims were Indian.

The first happened in Australia.

The second happened in Australia.

The third happened in Australia.

But the fourth happened in India (in Bombay).

The first happened in late 2009.

The second happened in early 2010.

The third happened in early 2010.

But the fourth happened in early 1993.

The first, second and third are the latest in a spate of such crimes in Australia, of the order of two dozen over the last 6 months.

The fourth was one in several hundred such crimes in this city over about 6 weeks, that left about a thousand Indians dead. (And many thousand more maimed and/or driven from their homes).

The first, second and third have prompted demonstrations in India and accusations that this is due to racism in Australia ("Racism is more dangerous than swine flu" says a banner in the photograph on the page first linked below).

The fourth has prompted no such demonstrations and accusations.

The first, second and third have prompted the Indian Government to demand that the guilty be identified and punished. Vayalar Ravi, India's Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, said the Australian authorities must "take action against the culprits behind [the crimes]". He went on: "My suggestion to the Australian government is that please take preventive measures and preventive actions against these anti-social elements ... The police know who are the unwanted and antisocial elements who are resorting to this kind of crime. So why can’t they arrest them in advance and put them behind the bars and even prosecute them?"

The fourth has prompted no demands from the Indian Government, let alone any arrests and prosecutions of those who killed Raju, let alone any arrests and prosecutions of those who killed the rest of the thousand, let alone any arrests and prosecutions of those who egged them on.

Answer: Maybe little connects the four crimes. Maybe more should.

***

More about Raju: Who died alone.

53 comments:

Anonymous said...

>> shocking and appalling anyway you look at it. The death of Raju is another matter altogether.

on thikning about it, chandru is right. death of raju is not shocking and appalling whatever way you look at it.

killing of indians is only shocking and appalling when it happens one at a time abroad. it is not so when it happens hundreds and thousands at a time in india.

i got it now, chandru. thank you.

Chandru K said...

Why make a connection between the two at all? Is it to ridicule Indians by saying "You Indians are upset about the deaths of a few Indians in Australia, but what about the riots in '93?" No, you don't have to bring up both subjects at once, unless your idea is to show up or taunt Indians. The subjects are entirely different, and require separate articles.

Anonymous said...

>>The subjects are entirely different

But they are not. There are Indians dying there in Australia and there are some who have died here in the riots. Why can't we ask for justice for the latter the same way we are doing it for those in Australia? Is the relation too complex for you to understand? Maybe it is. Or is it a matter of convenience for you?

There is no taunting here. It is just that how conveniently the people who become victims of homegrown terrorism are forgotten. What is happening in Australia is a reference point, a yardstick to which reactions are being compared to.

Chandru, I think you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Chandru K said...

What's the issue in Australia? What was the provocation? Simply being ethnically Indian? At least in the riots, there was some provocation or other, which doesn't justify the killings. But there's no issue in Australia at all. The Indians are not rioting because some temple was demolished by Australian Christians, and now the Aussies are hitting back at the rioters. So yes, the context and environment are entirely different.

Anonymous said...

>>So yes, the context and environment are entirely different.

From subjects being different you have now come to context and environment being different. For this, why go abroad? You can do it right here -- Gujarat, Punjab, Bombay -- in all of them the contexts and environments were different. You can find a hundred excuses, please go on and find some more.


You don't know what the provocation in Australia could be. It could very well be a street robbery in most cases but then that is not the point. How does the provocation matter?

Indians die there in Australia due to a reason that may seem racist in nature and Indians have died here because of religious hatred, but why should that matter? If you are willing to take up the cause for those who die in Australia, why not do it for those who have died here in India? Were they any less human?

Anonymous said...

Maybe a sidetrack in which case apologies.

We've gotten too used to stuff that happens here- my mindspace is occupied with the broad-daylight, brutal tortured death of a police officer, an arms length away from the gawking power of the Indian state ministers and their entourage, including brother and sister officers walking around looking busy on their cellphones and mobiles.

What hope indeed for the Rajus. If there is an "upside" it is that this still has shock attached.

-Jai

Chandru K said...

For that matter, how many Indians, including the media, get all excited about the terrorist killings in Kashmir and the Northeast? These go on practically every week, and more are being planned.

Anonymous said...

>>For that matter, how many Indians, including the media, get all excited about the terrorist killings in Kashmir and the Northeast?

The number of people who get "all excited" or the media, how does it make any difference to the call for justice? Or, in this day and age, is justice deserved and reserved only for the select few who get footage on national television?

ori0nis said...

Raju deserves justice as much as those who were killed abroad. Media-wise, I see this getting more coverage than hate crimes as recent as those in Orissa. If it also reflects popular sentiment then yes, someone must make the connection and keep reminding.

Chandru K said...

"Or, in this day and age, is justice deserved and reserved only for the select few who get footage on national television?'

It would appear so, largely. After all, we know that Kashmiri Hindus,and Indic-minded Kashmiri Moslems, have been victims of a massive injustice starting in 1990, and that Bangladeshi Hindus have been persecuted and forced to leave the country. Pakistan and Afghanistan too, have seen a huge drop in their Hindu population. Yet these are hardly high volume, high profile subjects in *any* mainstream media. By comparison, the Gujarat and Mumbai riots have been extensively covered, debated and commented on, even by non-Indians like Nussbaum, Brass and Dalrymple.

gaddeswarup said...

Dilip,
These are my impressions about a section of the current Indian students in Australia. Many of them take any sort of course to help get permanent visas later on. Those I met seem to be from lower middle to middle class families. These raise some money to bribe bank officials and pay the agents to produce enough certificates, some of them bogus, to get admissions. Often they have just enough for fees at the beginning and a few months of stay. The agents give them the impression that it is easy to make money here and that prmanent visas are automatic. Soon after coming they start looking for odd jobs from driving taxis to working in groceries and restaurants at minimal wages or less (often illegally since they can officially work only a certain number of hours a week). Soon they start paying back the loans in India and sending money to parents. They usually live in cheap subarbs, pay high rents for substandard housing that helps keep housing prices high. They help the economy by initial fees, cheap labour, and paying high rents. Generally the poorer suburbs are high crime areas and the current govt. claims that the conservatives have cut down on the number of police and that they are trying to improve the situation. Services are not what one would imagine in prosperous countries. Whenever there is a heat wave, train services break down.
Many of the courses are offered by private institutions run for profit with very meagre resources. Even some of the university courses do not seem to be much better. They too send staff to foreign countries to recruit students. Compared to private institutions, they may be bit better in offering some sort of orientation to students. For most it seems to be missing. I think that both the governments did not bother until crime rates got high since it was making money for both. They are many Chinese too but there seem to be much less atrocities against them. I do not know the reasons; possibly more money and different suburbs and better orientation from their government and local Chinese.
Of course, there are also some genuine students but Australia is not that strong in research except in a few areas like agriculure, madicine...
To some extent these seem to be similar to problems of villagers in India going to cities to make a living. My impressions are from a few I have met, heard about (mainly from a post office owner who meets a number of Indian students who come to send money home), a couple of people who run private educational institutions and from what I have read in news papers.

Chandru K said...

I hope gaddeswarup's intention is not to suggest that the Indian students, because of their specific background, brought on the violence against themselves.

Anonymous said...

>> I hope gaddeswarup's intention is not to suggest that the Indian students, because of their specific background, brought on the violence against themselves.

why do you hope that?? it is no different from your suggestion that raju brought his death on himself, when you wrote -- "At least in the riots, there was some provocation or other".

Anonymous said...

question is, what did raju do to get killed??

you yourself claim it was some other incidents dis-connected to him.

what did nithin garg do to get killed in australia??

there, you dont want any explanation.

it suits your perverse purpose to believe that with killing of raju in india, there's some context and justification -- but that killing of garg in australia must have happened for no reason at all. or that they are all racist in that country.

you dont want indians to be "ridiculed" and "taunted" (your own words). but you are willing to ridicule all australians by this attitude you throw about.

Chandran said...

Truth is simple, is that guys like Chandru don't like to be reminded of horrific incidents like Raju's killing. Because the criminals in those cases are guys Chandru likes.

That is why Chandru first asks, what is the connection. Then he says, Raju's murder was provoked. Then he brings in Bangladesh. (He does'nt stop to think, that I am objecting to connecting Australia to Raju, but then why I am connecting Bangladesh to Raju?).

(PS - I am also called Chandru as nickname.)

gaddeswarup said...

"I hope gaddeswarup's intention is not to suggest that the Indian students"
I myself faced some racist incidents in Australia ( and similar incidents in India). I think that when one moves to a new place, some orientation help is useful; in many universities there are orientation weeks and help with accomodation etc. I find that absent for many Indian students who come here (from the examples of the students I met). I wondered whether Chinese get better help in this respect and/or whether many of them are economically better off. It seems to be a point not discussed in many reports and if what perceive is correct, it may be worth investigating.

gaddeswarup said...

A first simple test would be to be to find out suburb by suburb the number of Indian and Chinese students, then rental rates, type of jobs they undertake. As far as I know such studies are not done. From what I have seen there are many Indian students in the western suburbs of Melbourne and many Chinese students in the central business district. This covers only a fraction of Melbourne and I have not made any systematic study.

Dilip D'Souza said...

Gaddeswarup, it's surprising to hear you say that some of these univs don't offer any orientation to their incoming students. US universities routinely have orientation sessions. And when I went to one, I was encouraged also to spend time at a sort of international students' centre, where several young people (not students) also volunteered, getting to know the international students. I think it was a great help to all of us slightly nervous foreigners.

Does it not happen like that in Australia?

gaddeswarup said...

Many of the Indian origin students I met in Melbourne university are locals and I did not really enquire there about orientation courses. I think that there is some orientation help in the bigger universities (though I do not know how good it is comparable to US universities. I did not study in the US, but I have some idea since I was directed to foreign student offices a few times for information about housing, visas etc), but many of the students I met went to the so called private colleges which teach courses on hospitality, hair dressing and some minor IT stuff. The students usually make contact with somebody from their area and find their way around. They often stay in a house with one or two to each room and share kitchen facilities. The houses are usually not good and rents high, each pays 100-150 dollars a week. They also find work with the help of fellow students. The ones I met work in K Mart like places loading, unloading, restaurants, drive taxis, as security personnel, cleaning jobs in houses, lawn mowing etc. The students I met are mostly from A.P and the post office owner met students from other areas.

Anonymous said...

It's also very curious how D'Souza plays off Indian suffering with a communal riot in India, in which the victims are invariably Moslem, or Sikh as in Nov 1984. That's also extremely annoying. He could easily pick from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai( Nov/2008) Ahmedabad(July/2008) where there was a particularly heinous attack on a government hospital or Varanasi, where the Sankat Mohan temple was bombed. The victims in all these cases were Hindus; I'd like to know about them, not just about Raju in 1993.

Chandru K said...

"It suits your perverse purpose to believe that with killing of raju in india, there's some context and justification -- but that killing of garg in australia must have happened for no reason at all. or that they are all racist in that country."

No, I'm looking for an issue in Australia, which would explain the rage the Australians are feeling. I discount curry, brown skin, accents and loud talk. Raju was killed in a context where there was much communal killing between Hindus and Moslems in the charged atmosphere of Mumbai, Dec-Jan 92-93. What exactly is the 'charge' in Australia. Did the Indians riot and rampage against the Australian police, and now the enraged Australian public are hitting back, in a few cases killing innocent, non-rioting Indians? THAT is an issue, though not something to be justified or glorified, of course.

gaddeswarup said...

Googling, I find that there is thesis by Michiel Bass, covering the period 2005-2009
http://dare.uva.nl/document/146883
I have not yet read the thesis. There are also a couple of articles by him: 'Cash Cows' from 2005
http://www.iias.nl/nl/42/IIAS_NL42_14.pdf
and 'Voices from Down Under', June 2009
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/Voices-from-down-under/articleshow/4685505.cms
In the thesis which was completed in October 2009, there is a postscript on the recent situation.
There are no definite conclusions. His 2005 article has comments similar to mine; I retired that year. He seems to suggest that there are rapid changes since then.

SUNIL said...

All murders for any reason or cause to be condemned as it is suppression of one by the other and violation of right to live.

When it happens inside the country, our machinery is supposed to investigate, find out, establish and punish. Sure, there are delays and much more in this so we happens to see that justice is sometimes denied or the culprits roam free. Its an issue we should debate and solve by ourselves and all of us have right to challenge such issues in our courts. There are various individuals and organisations doing this in our country against such happenings always. So it is our protests voiced against such crimes.

Crimes against Indians in Australia is also should be an issue of concern for any Indian living in India or abroad. The protests against it also is the same freedom to protest, which we have in India. Cases will be handled on Australian soil and protests may speed up the process of getting justice to the victims.

So it is not necessary to club the Australian crimes/protests into one and Indian ones to the other, unless and until you have something else to prove. Protests in both cases are justified and in both countries, its a matter of justice and we can ask for it or battle for it, well within the system. Delay or denial in one case cannot be taken as a merit to delay or deny justice in another case.

Anonymous said...

To come up with a relevant comment:

1. relative delta:
I read somewhere (DC) the Oz attacks were up from 17 in 2008 to ~100 in 2009.To compare, Dilip writes:

2007: Raju1
2008: Raju2
2009: Raju3, Raju4, Raju5, Raju6, Raju7

What are the chances Dilip thinks: "hey, whats going on with 2009?"

2. When Rajus were attacked here, it was largely based on some X identity - religious/linguistic/ethnic whatever. All right thinking people here (the superset of all Indians) get together to condemn the attacks and the vectors behind them.

If some or many Indians got defensive and said stuff like

"this isnt really happening" (many Australians?)

"bade bade shahron mein yeh sab hota hai" (Aus DPM?)

its kinda remiss not to attempt to correct their thinking.

3. to step back a little, I dont have more data and its likely our media are hyping this up a bit.

Thanks,
Jai

Anonymous said...

Chandru K does not think or accept Muslims,Christians,Sikhs and minorities as Citizens of India. It will not occur since they are not citizens its ok to kill them even though they are born in India.

Chandru K will be upset and concerned when "REAL Indian Citizens" are attacked not just in India around the world.

According to most of people like Chandru K
Hindus are "REAL" Citizens of India ummmm not really in Hindus too only the head part is a "MORE" Indian Citizen than the stomach and Thigh part the rest of foot hindus and out of boundry hindus are "LEAST" Indian citizens its their KARMA to be born like that and its ok to exploit them since they are "LEAST" Indian citizens.

Chandru K will also be upset when a "LEAST" Indian Citizen attacks a "MORE" Indian citizen but will ignore or think its KARMA when a "MORE" Indian citizen attacks kills, rapes and exploit "LEAST" Indian Citizen.

Even in "MORE" Indian citizen the one with money,power is the "MOST" Indian citizen and Indian justice system, and all its institutions will protect the rights and will provide justice in favour of "MOST" Indian citizen.

Its naive for rest of people to think all Citizens are "EQUAL". Its impossible in the book of Chandru K

Dilip must make it clear before comparing Indian Citizens so that people like Chandru K will stop comparing bangaladesh,kashmir etc.

Chandru K said...

The worst terrorism India has faced has certainly been Islamic, starting with the creation of Pakistan and carrying through with Kashmiri-Islamist, and the series of Islamist bombings and massacres in different Indian cities. Naxalite terror would be the second, and Khalistani the 3rd. With Christians, it's mostly their aggressive missionaries and evangelist fanatics, that create tension with the majority. In number, range, type and frequence the Islamic terror is the worst. As if to underline this reality, there was an attempt to bomb a number of historic temples in Tamil Nadu in the summer of 2008.

Blueshift said...

Chandru K

You will never depart from the "Citizens" Rule i said in above comment. Because that is the fundamental rule most people like you believe.


Now

"The worst terrorism India has faced has certainly been Islamic"

So you conclude that its ok to kill any Indian muslims even though he is "Indian Citizen" It does not matter if he is a good Indian Citizen(according the actual definition not mine) or not


so you grouped minorities and concluded and passed judgement that they are bad citizens all of them.

Which i think is unfortunate.

gaddeswarup said...

An Indian friend is visiting Melbourne told me that he saw an Austalian blog about suburb wise statistics on attacks on Indian students. So far, we could not find it again. If any body finds such blogs, can they please let me know. My e-mail address anandaswarupg@gmail.com
Thanks.

Anonymous said...

dcubed, since you respond to him evry now and then, can i ask if you understand whatever points this jai guy makes? for e.g. i cannot make tail or head of his last comment, even though he begins by saying "To come up with a relevant comment". what is this raju5/raju6 stuff? what is the media hyping up? pl to explain, boss.

vm

Anonymous said...

Why mention or connect the two at all?
Chandru k, you cannot requlate what can or cannot be compared. It is done and I find it sensible.

You dont. Your comment that Australians are irrational racists and Hindus are pacifists provoked to aggression has been published.

I have read it and reject your claim.

gaddeswarup said...

There is an article in today's Age: It's simple: India doesn't want to see its citizens harmed by Sushi Das. A quote from the article:
"... first, that Australia has a crime problem in the suburbs that it must attend to, and second, that India is within its rights to speak out when its citizens face danger."

Chandru K said...

"Hindus are pacifists provoked to aggression has been published."

Actually, we shouldn't have a problem with the above idea, because it is largely true,in fact almost entirely true. Hindus will not attack someone based purely on difference of accent, cuisine, appearance and slightly off beat behaviour( i.e talking a little loud). This is what Australians are in fact doing, unless there is evidence to the contrary that the ethnic Indians in Australia have actually done something really obnoxious like rioting, pelting policemen with stone, desecrating churches,damaging public property etc. I'm looking, to no avail at this point, for an issue in Australia.

Chandru K said...

"dcubed, since you respond to him evry now and then, can i ask if you understand whatever points this jai guy makes? for e.g. i cannot make tail or head of his last comment,"

I think I can, though I stand to be corrected. Dcubed is using the death of someone like Raju as a fixed point, and weighing it against every other terrorist attack and violent incident where Indians are victims. The problem with that, apart from the danger of making non-legitimate one-to-one comparisons, is that terrorism against India, both actual and potential, is an ongoing process. It's happening virtually every day in Kashmir, and every week in the Northeast. In this environment, the death of someone like Raju in a charged, hyper-emotional atmosphere, really should recede into the background, or at least be treated as a separate subject- the Bombay riots of 1993. And not be played off against all present and future attacks against India and Indians.

Chandran said...

Hindus will not attack someone based purely on difference of accent, cuisine ... (etcetera)

what planet does this guy come from? what a deluded!

of course he cannot have heard names like thackery, sajjan kumar, babulal bajrangi and so forth.

where do you find these guys, dcubed?

Chandran said...

sorry i forgot a bit more...

the death of someone like Raju really should recede into the background ... (etc)

this is very good idea. in fact, let us apply it to all murders, even in australia. why are we making a noise about any of them? let us instead stay quiet, let some years pass by, then we can ask chandru to say that these deaths should recede into the background.

Chandru K said...

Chandran, if the Islamic terrorists had their way, almost every Indian major city would have been massively bombed by now. It's only police action that foiled their plans. How is that in any way comparable to Sajjan Kumar or others who rioted in highly charged atmospheres, then cooled off. The intent of those characters is not to destroy India. As for Australia, I'm still searching in vain for an issue, a "charge". What is the issue? Curry, loud talk, darker complexion?

SUNIL said...

Murders/atrocities whether in India and Australia, both are to be investigated and culprits to be punished.
What I find moronic in this blog and its comments is: -
Some people are of vehement criticism when something goes wrong in India, and the same people are defensive when it happens in the west. They try to underplay the western incidents by placing it along with the Indian incidents and asking counter questions and indulge in propaganda. What is wrong or unusual in the protests made for Australian incidents? Is it not our right to protest? All of us have right to protest whether in India or Australia. Only thing is that we should do it by legal means as all of us are supposed to be living in civilized societies.

And for the people who find incidents on our soil different than the Australian I would say it is nothing less than terrorism and also has to be condemned irrespective of the religious beliefs associated with it. It is an assault on human right of living peacefully whether it is Hindu, Muslim, and Christian etc

As I wrote earlier, delay or denial in one case cannot be taken as a merit to delay or deny justice in another case.

Dilip D'Souza said...

Who has "underplayed" the "western incidents"?

While I don't believe a blanket "racism" is the reason for the crimes in Australia, what's been happening is certainly worrying. I am concerned for the safety of Indian friends in Australia. Please protest them, and loudly.

Anonymous said...

One thing that troubled me was that it seemed like a closed-ranks, wagons-circled defend-and-deny mentality coming out of Oz. I didnt detect as much concern and worry as I *expected* (admittedly I am reading thru the filter of the Indian media).

I am pleased to note (from TOI today) that Peter Cosgrove an ex-Army chief and a Melbourne top cop Jones have admitted there is a racial angle and criticizing the line that these are purely criminal acts - mostly attempted mugging /burglary.

That was extremely galling since most of the new victims were not burgled at all- just stabbed, cars burnt etc.

The developing spectral width of the conversation in Oz is to be welcomed.

Thanks,
Jai

Chandran said...

> it seemed like a closed-ranks, wagons-circled defend-and-deny mentality coming out of Oz

Yes. Alot like among some Indian circles, regarding terrorism like raju murder. See any comment on this page by Chandru K.

gaddeswarup said...

{January 20)From the Victorian police chief We've known for two years about Indian attacks: Overland :
"We recognised this problem a long time before it hit the public.

"We have known for two years that there has been this issue and we have been working away, at a number of levels around engaging with students, trying to make them understand the risks and how they keep themselves safe."

Mr Overland said police had detailed data on attacks involving Indians and said that while Indians were over represented when it came to robberies, the same could not be said for assaults.

About 50 per cent of assaults on Indians occurred in their workplace, mostly involving taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, he said.

Mr Overland said some of the attacks were racist.

"I have said from day one undoubtedly some of these attacks have a racist motive or there is racist elements to these attacks," he said.

"Regardless of who they are, what they are, what colour they are, what occupation they are, my job is to make the state as safe as I can for everyone."

Chandru K said...

Actually, it's people like Chandran, Dilip D'Souza and Blueshift who are in denial, or simply horrendously ignorant, of all the attempts to serial bomb Indian cities. Plans that were mercifully foiled by the Indian police and/or intelligence bureau. Now, cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai are on the radar of the Islamic terrorists. Let's see how Indians are treated in Australia, if many of the m are caught trying to serial bomb Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin. That would be a very appropriate comparison.

gaddeswarup said...

ip,
I apologize for too many comments. I have been wondering about the problem too but have been a bit out of touch since retirement since I have not been moving around Melbourne that much. Sushi Das has two informative articles in The Age today:
Advice on Indian students ignored
Hard lessons to be learnt
Conservative leader's reaction:
Immigrant support hit by gangs: Abbott

SUNIL said...

It is getting more and more clear that the major element behind these attacks is racist, thanks to the latest revelations in the Australian media.
No one has to think twice to term it as racism because it is always happening on a certain community which is continuously growing in Australia whether working or studying.Our intellectuals should be too lenient to think otherwise.

gaddeswarup said...

"No one has to think twice to term it as racism because it is always happening on a certain community which is continuously growing in Australia whether working or studying."
This is not clear to me. I faced racist incidents in one suburb during 1988-1992 and moved suburbs and none later. Last few days, we have an Indian visitor and travelled hundreds of miles in and around Melbourne without facing a single racist incident. But one cannot generalize from one's exprience. From reports, there is a racist component in some of the attacks. I still do not understand why Chinese students faced lesser number of attacks.

SUNIL said...

To term these incidents as racially motivated it is not necessary to find all of the Indian population is attacked one by one. By and large the victims are Indian only so it is easy to assume as racial, if not what could be the reason? Somebody should be able to tell. In many cases people are not robbed also as per the media. Is it really difficult to see a racist element?

gaddeswarup said...

These things are difficult to decide without adequate data. I am going by my experiences, what I discussed with friends and from newspaper reports of which I found Sushi Das reports and (also Bass's thesis) informative. From my own experiences, I think that there is a racist element in some of the attacks. There are various suburbs in which there is unemployment, commision housing, petty crimes etc. There are some in which there are various ethnic gangs. The compositions vary and generally the law and order problem is not well addressed in these suburbs. Possibly for budgetary reasons, certain amount of petty crime is tolerated. My guess is that many Indian students are in such suburbs. A friend told me that he sat next to policeman in a waiting room in one of these areas three years ago. The policaman told him that Indian students were getting beaten up and wondered why they walked home late in such areas. My guess is that the Chinese coming from Hong Kong are relatively wealthy, those from mainland China come on scholarships and live in different areas. Interestingly, there have been very few attacks on women. Possibly they avoid difficult times and moreover if women are attacked the police response may be severe. Police seem act well when gangs go beyond certain levels. The impression I got from this friend (who talked to the policeman) is that Indians were seem as an easy target by some of the petty criminals and gangs. Another reason might me that very few Indian students complained in the early days because they were afraid that being on the police books will involve a thorough check of their credentials when they apply for permanent residency. At the moment, I think that there was a mix of such reasons which went beyond reasonable limits since Australian government was happy with the money ( Student fees, cheap labour and high rents etc) and did not heed the advice of their own academics given about two years ago. They would have probably acted much sooner if more Chinese students were attacked, since they depend very much on business with the Chinese. I think that the Australian government is mainly to blame. I do not see what Indian government could have done except pressurizing earlier. They might have taken some action on the agents who were making false promises to bring students to colleges which are run by Indians and others here with mostly (sometimes all ) students from India.
All this affects a number of students who saw Australian education as a passport to the west.
But these are only surmises on my part without suburbwise data.

Anonymous said...

There was a murder of a college student in Bihar last week, at the hands of Naxalites. Instead of going back to 1993 to cite Raju's death, why not look at 2010? Unless the agenda of D'Souza and like minded people is to play off attacks on Indians in Australia, with communal violence in India. To equate casualties of minority communities in India , with the ethnic Indian minority in Australia. Very bad comparison.

Anonymous said...

"To equate casualties of minority communities in India , with the ethnic Indian minority in Australia. Very bad comparison."

why it is a bad comparison? it seems perfect comparison to me.

ak

Dilip D'Souza said...

ak asks:

why it is a bad comparison? it seems perfect comparison to me.

Here's one reason it is a bad comparison. Nobody has been arrested and punished for murdering Raju, and in fact pretty much nobody has been punished for the hundreds of murders like his that happened in Bombay in 1992-93.

In Australia, in at least some of the cases, the criminals have been arrested and charged. One example.

Anonymous said...

re Chinese being safer.

This will sound silly, but its true that a couple of armed cops in US shot a lone Chinese man who held a broomstick when he didnt freeze fast enough for them or didnt follow their shouted orders. Back on that thread it was mentioned stuff like that has happened before.

"They watched too many kung-fu movies" was the report headline. Its just possible that goons armed with knives/ screwdrivers dont consider themselves sufficiently advantaged to take on a Chinese, they get a positive profile. Indians are smaller and being bashed up even by angry 16yr olds?

To all the reasonable and logical points coming from gaddeswarup, it may not hurt to add this in.

thanks,
Jai

Chandru K said...

"Here's one reason it is a bad comparison. Nobody has been arrested and punished for murdering Raju,"

How many Naxalites have been arrested for their murders of people who simply disagree with them, like the college student in Bihar last week. Of all the Kashmiri terrorist strikes against India, how many of the perpetrators have been caught and punished. The Naxalite and Kashmiri killers are committing their crimes in 2010, not in 1993.

Anonymous said...

Okay.

An Indian couple have been arrested and charged in the Ranjodh murder case.

As I saw on some blogs, there is no letup in the Indian media spinning racist Oz and significant under-reporting of this.

-Jai