Sydney Indian community sends a message to Victoria

Combined by PDF Combine (Unregistered Version)

If you want to remove the watermark, please register

In the wake of the attack and murder of Nitin Garg, a 21-year-old Indian student in Melbourne, theUnited Indian Associations Inc (UIA) and All International Student Association (AISA) organised a meeting of community leaders in the UIA offices in Parramatta. The purpose was for the community in NSW to get together to take a position and ‘send a message to Victoria’, presumably Victorian government authorities. The meeting was led by Stepan Kerkyasharian, (chairman of Community Relations Commission CRC), Amit Dasgupta (Consul General of India), Navjot Singh (President of AISA) and Aruna Chandrala (President of UIA).

Aruna Chandrala as the chairperson gave an introduction to the situation. The CRC Chairman followed with an overview. The Consul General, while making it clear that his jurisdiction was limited to NSW and SA, expressed anguish and stressed the need to remain on alert in NSW. He said that the community must not focus on who is to blame but rather work with NSW Police to make their area safe. He commended the work that Cdr Robert Bradford did to make the Harris Park area safe where international students have worked with the local communities. He stressed that we don’t need to be vigilantes, as that’s not our job. To the Australian Indian community members, his message was to ensure that this country has all the values that brought them here to call Australia home.

The forum was then thrown open to members of the community and most delegates made their presence felt with their useful comments and suggestions.

Hemchandra Rao said that Police visibility does a lot to prevent crimes, relating the case of New York, a hotbed of crime, which was succesfully cleaned up. Vish Vishwanathan said that 1400-1500 attacks were one too many and the government must accept it as a problem and take stern action against offenders so that others take a lesson. Padmanabha and Abbas Alvi stressed the need to take a realistic view of the situation because we cannot form a strategy unless we know the causes. Gautam Sharma, Amit Pal, Rajwant Singh, Amarinder Singh, Dr. Navin Patel and many other community members also participated.

Several members related their own stories of racial abuse on the street, even in shopping centres. It was stressed that if a member suffers a racial abuse, they must make a complaint. Crime in any form must not be tolerated.

Other suggestions also came up.

* There should be policy intervention on: a. security; and b. communication. To illustrate, each university must have designated faculty members who form a committee to help international students, teach them the rules around living here etc.

* There was a detailed discussion on media’s role and the need to engage with it, especially in India. The CRC and the CG stressed the reality that press is free in both countries and cannot be controlled.

* There should be targeted crime squads that focus on particular trouble spots and trouble-maker groups.

* The community was unanimous that protest marches were not an effective tool. Rather diplomacy must be pursued which is known to have resulted in good outcomes. The consensus was that a crime be treated as a crime and dealt as one rather than attribute motives to it.

Hasnain Zaheer