New South Wales premier assures safety to Indians

Natasha Chaku

Melbourne, Jun 5 (PTI) Amid growing concern among the
Indians in Australia after a spate of attacks on them, the
Premier of the state of New South Wales Friday met members of
the Indian community to assure them that they will not be
subject to any violence as witnessed in Victoria.

The authorities in the state underlined that it has no
intelligence (report) to support that Indian students were
being racially attacked because they were perceived as "soft
targets."

Premier Nathan Rees met Indians and dismissed concerns
that the students from the community could be subject to
"racial" violence.

Even as he denied any problems in New South Wales, the
Premier stressed that he would liaise regularly with the
Indian community leaders to ensure their safety and welfare of
the Indian students in the state, which hosts 20,000 students
from the country, media reports here said.

"Very occasionally (there are) minor incidents. (There
is) certainly no pattern and nothing racially based," Rees
said.

Andrew Scipione, the NSW Police Commissioner, said
there was no intelligence suggesting Indian students were
being targeted in particular.

Commenting on the petrol bomb incident that took place
in Sydney on an Indian student, the commissioner described it
as "a horrific attack".

"It highlights the importance of making sure the
community understand that we want to hear, that every event,
no matter how small it is, we want to be told, so we can take
some action. We can't act if we don't know," the Police
Commissioner underlined.

Yadu Singh, from the Indian Consulate in Sydney, heads
a committee to address concerns about the welfare of Indian
students in Australia.

He said he knew of a number of Indian students who had
been robbed in Sydney because they were perceived as "soft
targets".

"We have to have undercover policing to catch hold of
these criminals who are exploiting the naivety and niceness of
these students who have come from India," Singh stressed.

His colleague Vish Viswanathan said Indian students
did not usually go to police.

"The Indians generally are not in the habit of going
to the police because they are frightened to go to the police
in India.

"So when they come here they feel that if they go to
the police something wrong will happen to them and they are
afraid of that," Singh said.

He underlined the need to make the students more
"educated" about their rights.

"They are also not aware of their rights. They feel
reporting to police will affect their immigration status and a
few other long-term planning, so that is why the students have
to be educated," he said. PTI NC
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