Indian students in Australia attacked

 

SYDNEY: Kartik Patel was only metres away from home, when he was approached by a man wanting to know the time. Within seconds, the man had snatched Kartik’s mobile and punched him twice in the face.

 

“I had a black eye and a tooth broken. I was totally shaken and afraid to step out of the house after dark,” says Kartik, who arrived in Sydney only three-and-a-half months ago from Ahmedabad to pursue a three-year course in Hospitality Management with Commercial Cooking at the Sydney International College of Business Pty Ltd in Sydney.

 

Incidents of theft, robbery and assault against Indian students have been on the rise in Sydney and Adelaide, even as India becomes Australia’s second largest education market with 27,500 students, adding to the $6 billion a year Australian International Education Services export market.

 

Nisarg Patel’s two friends were attacked by a group armed with baseball bats and metal sticks, only 10 houses away in a northern inner-city suburb of Adelaide in the state of South Australia.

 

A student of Advanced Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Australia, Nisarg says, “One friend was hit in the left eye and was in intensive care for four days. He needed 12 stitches on his head, plastic surgery to his nose and the doctors are still uncertain about his eyesight. The other friend had a fractured left hand.”

 

During the attacks, armed groups have asked for cash and mobile phones, before assaulting their victims. In two Adelaide cases, the victims were told, “Go back to your country” after being bashed.

 

While sporadic cases of attacks on Indian students have been happening for sometime, in the past three months over two dozen such cases have been reported. Jolan Patel, who is studying Master of Information Technology at the University of Southern Queensland (Sydney campus) and is also a student representative says, “Most of these cases have occurred between 7pm and 11pm, closer to the students shared accommodation or home. Sometimes even guns have been used to intimidate. Not all cases are reported, as students don’t want to alarm their parents and families back home.”

 

Many of the overseas students work late hours and get home alone on public transport, walking home from train and bus stops. “They become soft targets by groups of four to six drug users, for example, who just want cash. Most of these incidents have occurred in poorly lit areas of suburban Harris Park, Parramatta and the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills in Sydney,” says United India Association president Dr Prabhat Sinha, who has provided medical care to some of these students.

 

In order to ensure the safety and security of the Indian students, the Indian Consul General in Sydney, Sujan Chinoy says, “I have taken a multi-pronged approach involving the Premiers and Police Commissioners of the states of New South Wales and South Australia, the Indian community and student representatives to ensure that such incidents don’t recur in the future.”

 

The police have started regular patrols of vulnerable areas to reduce the likelihood of such crimes and provide reassurance to the local community.