WHILE travelling on a train in Melbourne’s western suburbs last month, Indian student Sourabh Sharma was brutally attacked and robbed by a group of thugs. His attackers screamed racial insults as they kicked him in the head, face and ribs.
The 21-year-old later sold his story to the Melbourne Age newspaper, resulting in a blaze of publicity both in Australia and India. Police figures show that 1,447 ethnic Indians were robbed or assaulted in the state of Victoria in 2007 and 2008. And the number is rising. On the night of May 24, for example, two young Indian men were attacked with a screwdriver, a third was hit over the head with a bottle, and a fourth suffered head injuries after a fight with gatecrashers at a party.
Victoria’s Attorney-General Rob Hulls has since announced that the state law will be amended to require judges to consider offenders’ motivations when considering sentencing: “What we’re looking at is ensuring that judges take into account whether or not a crime has been committed purely based on hatred or vilification of a particular group.” The change is designed to bring Victoria in line with other Australian states with such laws.
This debate, however, about the extent to which the assaults were racially motivated has masked a much larger problem, of which the latest incidents are merely symptoms: teenage gang violence. Like any large city, Melbourne has long had its share of gang problems, but it has only been in the last 10 years or so that the issue of gang violence has become a matter of public concern. And matters may be about to get worse. Due to the economic slowdown, some 22.8 per cent of youths between the ages of 15 and 19 in the labour market are unemployed. This figure – a national average – is almost certainly higher in Melbourne’s economically depressed western suburbs, where a larger proportion of parents may be unable to afford to keep their children in school or university.
Early last year, media reports spoke of fears of an impending gang war between Melbourne’s two biggest groupings. One, from the city’s north-western suburbs called itself the Arabian Soldiers Arab Defenders. It was reportedly ready to face off against another group based in the south-eastern satellite town of Dandenong, said to consist of an alliance of white Australians, Sudanese, Afghans, Italians and Greeks. Police said that the rivalry was already responsible for 10 stabbings and were demanding the establishment of a Youth Crime Taskforce to deal with the situation.
Melbourne may still be a lot safer than many cities in the United States, but the gang problem is widespread. The debate about the extent to which the admittedly disproportionate number of attacks on Indian students is opportunistic – as local police maintain – or the work of racist thugs is a heated one. Last weekend, the issue threatened to strain diplomatic ties with New Delhi when television images of police using force to break up a protest by thousands of Indians in central Melbourne were beamed back to India.
It is unclear why local gangs would deliberately target ethnic Indians rather than members of other minority communities. Mr Andrew Holloway, vice-president for international students at Victorian universities, said: “The work patterns of Indian students are somewhat different from other students. They tend to work at 24/7 conveniences, petrol stations, late-at-night shops, and therefore are more likely to be on the public transport network late at night.”
Security camera footage released by the police in the hope of identifying the attackers of Mr Sharma show that they were of mixed ethnicity. And gang violence cuts both ways. On the same night the two Indians were attacked with a screwdriver, for example, a white Australian was attacked and killed outside a 7-Eleven store by a group of Asian youths.
The debate about the nature and extent of Australian racism will continue. But it would be sad if the current controversy diverted attention from the need for a concerted effort to deal with violent teenage gangs – a problem which cuts across the ethnic divide. Decreasing the plentiful supply of alcohol and weapons seems to be the preferred remedies of politicians, while police have lobbied state governments to give them powers to limit opportunities for teens to congregate in public places.
But such steps need to be supplemented with more positive ones designed to address the underlying causes. A 2007 study of ethnic gangs by the Australian Multicultural Foundation found that the main reason young people joined gangs was because of their lack of social opportunities and their need for a sense of belonging. One programme cited by Melbourne youth worker Saeed Saeed is the 2007 Brave Programme run by the Moreland City Council. It involved giving marginalised youth training and employment as swimming pool lifeguards. “Employment at local pools immediately decreased risks of youth tensions,” noted Mr Saeed.
When the dust settles on the current furore, it will hopefully be issues such as these that policymakers will address.
Copyright Singapore Press Holdings, 2009