Hundreds of Indian students protested and launched violent reprisals overnight in Australia’s biggest city in the latest flare-up in racial tensions in recent weeks, police said on Monday.
Police said they had to call in the dog squad to control the crowd in west Sydney, where protesters wielding sticks and baseball bats attacked men of “Middle Eastern appearance” in apparent retaliation for an earlier assault.
It was believed to be the first time Indian students had reacted violently to a series of attacks on them in Australia which have caused outrage on the subcontinent and strained diplomatic ties between Canberra and New Delhi.
The protesters gathered after an Indian man in his early 20s was attacked by a group of men of Middle Eastern descent, police said.
Police superintendent Robert Redfern denied reports members of the crowd, which finally dispersed at about 2am, were armed with knives.
But he said: “There were certainly suggestions people had either baseball bats or hockey sticks and the like.”
Redfern said the violence in Harris Park was not race-related and stemmed from a series of “opportunistic” crimes against Indians.
But New South Wales Lebanese Community Council spokesman Elie Nassif said there had been tensions between small sections of the Lebanese and Indian communities.
“Whether we like it or not, it is happening, but as community leaders we should work together to wipe all this [out],” he told ABC radio.
Recent assaults on Indian students have been dubbed “curry bashings” in the Indian media and prompted frantic diplomatic efforts in Canberra to ease New Delhi’s concerns about the issue.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this month called in the former head of Australia’s elite Special Air Service regiment to lead a task force examining the attacks.
The issue came to a head late last month when student Sravan Kumar Theerthala was left comatose after being stabbed with a screwdriver by gatecrashers at a party he was attending in Melbourne.
India’s foreign minister yesterday urged Indian students in Australia to stay calm.
“I would like our Indian students to be patient ... restrained. They have gone there to pursue higher studies, they should concentrate on that,” Indian Minister of External Affairs S.M. Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.
Krishna said Canberra had assured New Delhi that steps would be taken to ensure the security of Indian students.
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