Racial attacks will hit ties, Krishna cautions Australia

Continued attacks on Indians in Australia do not "augur well" for bilateral ties, external affairs Minister S M Krishna said in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The minister was reacting to the latest attack on an Indian in Melbourne which was the fifth such assault on Indian cabbies within a week.

Krishna said he was expecting a report from the Indian High Commissioner to Australia on the incident. “But it is very unfortunate that they keep repeating, which does not augur well for our bilateral relationship," the minister said. He has already indicated a possibility of the government advising Indian students not to go to Australia if the attacks on them continued.

Meanwhile, in a shift from the argument that the attacks on Indians were being overplayed by the media and not all of them had racial overtones, Victoria's top cop on Jan 20 said crime against Indians was a problem which was noticed by police two years ago. Indians are overrepresented in robbery statistics and there is a racist element to some attacks, chief commissioner Simon Overland said, according to media reports. "There is no question, regardless of the motives, Indian students have to a degree been targeted in robberies and that is not okay," he admitted. "We recognised this problem a long time before it hit the public." About 50 per cent of assaults on Indians occurred in their workplace, mostly involving taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, he said.

However, Australia's former military chief has characterised recent attacks on Indian students as racially motivated, rejecting Canberra's official line that the violence has been purely criminal rather than racist.

The attacks over the past 18 months, including a fatal stabbing of a 21-year-old Indian graduate this month, have strained ties with India and hurt Australia's lucrative foreign student market, its third largest export earner.

"If you didn't suspect a racial strand you'd be mad," the high-profile former general Peter Cosgrove told The Age newspaper .

- Asian Tribune -