Racist rage on a Melbourne bus

Welcome to the world of Melbourne's underclass.

This video has gone viral, revealing the ugly racist underbelly that exists in Melbourne, which generally prides itself on being a multicultural and cosmopolitan city.

It occurred on the bus from Mordialloc to Caulfield a couple of weekends ago, on a warm day when a lot of folks had been out having a good time. Some French backpackers at the back of the bus, probably after a few beverages, were singing a song in French. While this is something that most people consider at worst mildly annoying, clearly some people saw it differently.



The man who filmed this on his phone is Mike Nayna, a local comedian. Nayna is of Mauritian heritage, which explains the racist tirade about black people.

You can listen to a radio interview with Nayna about the incident here; there is also some entended footage, although there are so many bleeps it's hard to hear what is going on.

Some comments have popped up around the place saying that the French woman instigated the whole thing by singing in French. To which I would argue that the proper response if you don't like someone singing on the bus is to politely ask them to keep it down. Making sexually violent threats involving a knife and smashing the bus window is probably not the standard way to deal with that situation.

Particularly not when you are pushing a pram and your young son is right behind you. Perhaps those children are the biggest victims here.

Just to show that this sort of mentality is hardly restricted to Australia, check out the parallels with this case in Britain.

Gang attacks on taxi drivers in Melbourne's West.

Will this incident threaten to re-ignite tensions between Australia and India again, after the "curry-bashing" attacks of a few years ago?

A cab driver was racially abused as he was viciously beaten by a gang of thugs who ambushed and robbed five taxis in separate incidents in Melbourne's west overnight. Up to six men wearing balaclavas and armed with baseball bats pulled up in two stolen cars and attacked the drivers at Sunshine, Brooklyn and Laverton North between midnight and 1:00am this morning. One victim suffered serious head injuries. The owner of the taxi the man was driving says the driver was taunted as he was beaten with baseball bats. "They hit very badly you know, abusing him, you know, saying you're Indian, go back to your country," owner Sunny Singh told Fairfax radio.

Welcome to Melbourne's "Wild" West. Interestingly, despite the "go back to your country" taunts, it appears that the suspects are a gang of Pacific Islanders. I guess violent thugs are not known for their sense of irony.

When attacks on Indians in Australia dominated the headlines a few years ago, one of the big debates was whether they were racially motivated or merely opportunistic. In truth, the diverse nature of the attacks meant that it was difficult to generalise. But this case shows an example of an attack in which racism plays a part yet was probably not the motivation. The gang appears clearly to have robbery as its primary motive, and was probably not committing robbery out of any racial motive. The taunts are part of the attack but probably not the reason for it - they are just the sort of thing that spews out of the mouth of a stupid thug as he beats someone up.

That said, it is possible that the driver got such a heavy beating due to his race. You wonder why the attackers were so brutal, when they could have just taken his money and left. Would they have been quite as violent to a taxi driver who was white? African? East Asian? Pacific Islander? Probably... I'm not seriously advancing this theory, but nonetheless I think it's something worth pondering when we consider what exactly constitutes racially-motivated crime.


See also:

Addressing the myths and misconceptions about anti-Indian violence in Australia (from 2010)

"Curry-bashing" on the rise in Melbourne - Indian students targeted (from 2009)

"Phi and Me Too"

Caught Phi and Me Too at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival last night, which triumphed over the sauna-like conditions (due to some heating malfunction at the venue, Hairy Little Sista) to easily win over the sweaty audience with a tour-de-force of ethnic humour.

The brainchild of Fiona Chau (playing geeky teenage boy Phi Nguyen) and Diana Nguyen (as his very tiger-ish mother Kim), the 1 hour comedic play centres around the theme of growing up Vietnamese in Australia, and a Vietnamese mother's particularly gruelling brand of matriarchal love. The pair are assisted by Steve McPhail playing a variety of characters; I'm told he was originally their high school drama teacher.

All three give good performances (seeing McPhail play a Vietnamese auntie is hilariously surreal), but the star turn undeniably comes from Diana Nguyen - her expressive face, stage energy and over-the-top Vietnamese accent make the larger-than-life Kim an unforgettable character, yet one that all the Asians in the audience found instantly recognisable.



Personally I love this kind of fobby humour, although I understand it's not for everyone. But anyone with even a mild familiarity with Asian parents - or even "ethnic" parents for that matter - will get a kick out of this. For those who have never experienced tiger parenting, it's still a very enjoyable peek into that world. There were occasionally jokes that my Vietnamese friends found hilarious that went completely over my head, but for the most part, it was easily relateable.

Phi and Me Too is on until Sunday the 8th of April.

http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2012/season/shows/phi-and-me-too/

Surely someone's singing wasn't that bad...

Bats and poles used in karaoke brawl
Baseball bats and metal poles were used in a brawl outside a karaoke bar early this morning with six men taken to hospital for treatment.
Police received reports of a large fight in front of the bar in Railway Parade North, Glen Waverley around 3am when it's believed 10 men attacked a large group of patrons leaving the premises.
Acting Sergeant Alex Goodman said the attackers fled quickly and that police were unable to determine whether the attack was gang related or what the motive might have been.
"This is a particularly disturbing and brutal attack carried out in the main street in Glen Waverley. This group were all wearing hoodies and had their faces covered at the time," acting Sergeant Goodman said.

WTF Asian people? Ok so I don't know for a fact yet that the assailants were Asian, but I'd bet a small sum of money on it. The victims were certainly Asian.

Come on people, this is messed up. How is possible that the words "karaoke" and "disturbing and brutal attack" can be used in the same article? (Well actually...)

"The Slap" and race-bending

The television adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ multi-awardwinning novel The Slap has been one of the most anticipated events on Australian TV this year. Set in Melbourne’s suburbs, it explores the fallout amongst a group of friends and family after a man slaps a misbehaving child (who is not his own) at a barbecue. Tsiolkas focuses particularly on the diverse tapestry of modern suburban Australia, and how ethnicity, gender and age influence the characters’ actions and reactions to the incident.





I should state firstly that I haven’t read the novel, and so don’t have any positive or negative preconceived notions about how it should be translated to film. But it’s interesting to note that one of the notable changes in the production process has been to the ethnicity of one of the characters - Aisha, wife of Greek-Australian Hector and the organiser of the barbecue at which the titular slap takes place. In the novel, Aisha is described as Anglo-Indian, but the Aisha of the TV version is played by British actress Sophie Okonedo, who is Nigerian/Jewish by ethnicity.

According to this article:

As much as possible, the filmmakers looked to actors who matched the characters' ethnicity.
In the case of Aisha, this led to a drawn-out process after Connolly travelled to London to audition British-Indian actresses.
After meeting the ''staggeringly great actress'' Okonedo, a decision was made to change Aisha's cultural background to Mauritian. According to Connolly, Tsiolkas was very open to the changes, even writing a detailed backstory for the ethnically transformed Aisha.

While Tsiolkas's book is specifically about the experiences of Greek-Australian migrants, Aisha's Indian ancestry is explored in less detail. What mattered to Tsiolkas, Connolly says, is that Aisha regards herself as an outsider to mainstream Australia, a common bond that links her to Hector and his close-knit Greek family.

Not having read the book, I can’t yet comment on how integral Aisha’s Indian-ness is to the story, and whether her character would be essentially compromised by being Mauritian instead. Blogger Byron Wong tells me that the Indian element is important and the alteration is extremely disappointing. Tsiolkas obviously didn’t think it was a huge deal.

Now I like Sophie Okonedo, and it’s hard to dispute her ability as an actress, having been previously been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Hotel Rwanda. But it’s still a shame. Over half a million Australians have South Asian ancestry, and it’s one of the fastest growing segments of our population. South Asian Australians have a very prominent presence in fields like medicine and information technology (as well as some of the stereotypical ones like driving taxis and working at 7-11s). Yet as far as Australian TV drama goes, they may as well not exist.

Notably, this is one of the first times that a major role in a major Australian TV series was of a specifically South Asian character, yet whoever was involved in casting The Slap could seemingly not find an Australian actress of South Asian background anywhere. Now admittedly, I can’t think of any off the top of my head, as there are none with a significant profile. Yet that also says a lot about the industry’s reluctance to give such people the chance.

Even if they had gone with a British-Asian actress instead, that would still have been a positive thing to at least see a desi playing a desi in a sizable role on Australian TV. Alternatively, if someone of Indian descent was required, I hear there’s a country called India which is apparently full of them, and presumably some of them can act too.

At least I’m glad that while Aisha got “race-bended”, she didn’t get white-washed as frequently happens to non-white characters in film and television (see the Billy Sing story as an example). Melbourne has a sizeable Mauritian community and I’m happy to see them get some love, even if Okonedo is obviously not Mauritian herself. It’s good to see an “African” character on Australian TV, and it’s good to see an actress the calibre of Sophie Okonedo on Australian TV. But surely it’s not an impossible task to have a specifically South Asian character played by a South Asian actress.

UPDATE: It turns out that Aisha is not the only Asian character in The Slap who has been de-Asianized. Check it here.


See also:

The lack of Asians on Australian TV, and why it matters

Yellowface is still alive

Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Ava Vidal

If you're in Melbourne, highly-rated British comedienne Ava Vidal is in town for the next couple of days, performing at Chapel Off Chapel. I like what I've seen of her so far.



I've caught a few comics at the festival so far. The undoubted highlight was Hannibal Buress, while Tom Segura and Marina Franklin were good for a few laughs. Less interesting was Matt Braunger (you fly all the way from the US and those are your best jokes, Matt, seriously?), while Moshe Kasher gave a kickass 10-minute set at one gig and a flat and disappointing 25-minute set at another gig. Weird.

Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Hannibal Buress and Moshe Kasher

So 

(I'm the guy who appears to made of pure energy)

I had one of those random evenings that turns out completely and randomly different than I first thought it would be. At 4:45pm I was seated at my computer and thinking how I was going to cook some Korean food and chill in the crib the rest of the night... then somehow at 6:30pm I was lining up outside Soft Belly to watch some random comics I wasn't that familiar with, simply because it was only $12 and since I'm a tightass it seemed like too good a deal to refuse. And 4 hours later it was over and it was quite amazing, and included me getting pulled up on stage at one point by Adam Hills in the name of audience participation (pictured right).

 We were treated to short sets by host Karl Chandler (good and occasionally brilliant), Adam Hills (justifying why he's probably Australia's favourite comic right now), Charlie Pickering (hit-and-miss on this occasion but still interesting), Lawrence Leung (underwhelming, his TV shows are far better than his standup), Canadian Deanne Smith (good without being amazing), and a lengthy set from headliner Brendon Burns (edgy, offensive, poignant and hilarious). Impressing me most were two US comics who I'd previously never heard of, Moshe Kasher and Hannibal Buress, who offered 15-minute tasters of their upcoming acts at the Comedy Festival.



Buress, who has worked as a writer on both SNL and 30 Rock, in particular has shot straight onto the shortlist of my favourite comedians.


Check out their acts and more at the 25th Melbourne International Comedy Festival, from 30th March until 24th April.

"My brother's coming home one day."

When you live in one of the world's most advanced countries with one of the highest standards of living, it is reasonable to expect that your fellow citizens uphold a basic level of civilisation. Yet clearly some people's mentalities remain mired in barbarity.
Now it's not uncommon for people to get stabbed and beaten in Melbourne, unfortunately. But once in a while a case emerges that exposes the culture of macho insanity that lies behind it.

This from a year ago:

A brawl in which a man was fatally stabbed at a suburban football oval was payback for a party fight among teenagers, a Melbourne court has heard. Nathan Roberts-Nunan, 20, died after being stabbed at Diggers Rest in February this year, and his mate Stephen Thorneycroft was critically injured.
Six men are facing committal proceedings charged with murder and attempted murder.
 Those charged are: Ante Vucak, 18, of Cairnlea, Jovan Ogrizovic, 18, of Caroline Springs, Mladen Mrnjaus (Mladen Mrnjaus), 21, of St Albans, Tomislav Panic, 18, of Hillside, Tomislav Stevanja, 19, of Sunbury, Nikola Andreevski, 21, of Avondale Heights.
Nathan Smith, 18, of St Albans, pleaded guilty to murder on Monday.
Ryan Downes, 15, told the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday that he had punched three youths at a birthday party the month before the stabbing after they took an interest in his sister.
Subsequently, Mr Downes' 16-year-old mate Kyle Nunan received a message on the MSN website asking him to take part in a fist fight the following Sunday at the Diggers Rest skate park in Melbourne's outer north.
Mr Nunan told the court the person messaging him said he was 16 years old and they agreed no weapons would be used. The person said he had heard about Mr Nunan picking on his mates.
In a statement to the court, Mr Nunan said he had heard rumours at school on the Friday before the fight that there would be baseball bats and knives at the fight. Under cross-examination, he said he took a knife to the fight because he did not know what to expect, but he did not use it. In his witness statement, Mr Downes said he saw a group of about 15 people walking across the oval. "They had their wog hair cuts, and I could see that they were carrying machetes and poles," he said. As they got near, the group started to sprint towards them, he said. One of the men yelled "St Albans", before the attack began, Mr Downes said.
"Then Nathan goes: `No trouble, no trouble," he said. "By this he meant that he didn't want to fight. Nathan didn't get a chance to run."

And this week:

The family of a man killed in a gang brawl at a suburban Melbourne football oval has clashed with supporters of three people jailed for their role in his death.

Nathan Roberts-Nunan's family said the jail terms handed out to the three - the last of a dozen people sentenced over his death - were disgusting and a joke.
Mr Roberts-Nunan, 20, was struck with a baseball bat and then stabbed during the brawl at Diggers Rest in Melbourne's northwestern outskirts in February 2009 and died in hospital a few hours later.
He had gone to the skate park at the Diggers Rest Recreational Reserve with a friend - who was stabbed but survived - to support his younger brother who had been challenged to a fight.
On Thursday, Nikola Andreevski, 22, John Ray Garcia, 22, and a 17-year-old youth were jailed for a total of between five and six years for charges including manslaughter and affray.
Andreevski will serve at least three years before being eligible for parole, Garcia three years and nine months and the youth was given a non-parole period of three-and-a-half years.
The sentences angered both the accused's supporters and the victim's family, with many from both sides storming out of the Victorian Supreme Court.
One of the victim's sisters had to be restrained by a relative as she reached for the accused as they were led past. The confrontation continued outside the court, with both sides yelling abuse and the sister labelling the sentencing as disgusting.
"My brother's coming home one day. My brother's coming home," a brother of one of the accused yelled to Mr Roberts-Nunan's family.
Mr Roberts-Nunan's aunt Carmel Nunan hit out at the sentencing of all those involved and the behaviour of their supporters.
"What do I say here, 18 years of age, sob story, yet again, we're so sick of it," she told reporters.
"The thing is kids of this age, young men of this age, are over fighting wars in Afghanistan and are considered brave young men. But in courts like this they're considered immature and therefore their sentences are reduced. It's just double standards, and it's an absolute joke when you consider the severity of the crime and the brutality of the crime."
Justice Paul Coghlan said while the three did not inflict injury or cause death, everyone in the group was responsible at least to some degree for what happened.
He said the incident and the crime of affray involved an "unremitting senselessness and cowardly display of mob violence at its most extreme".
"I reiterate that this event at Diggers Rest was one of the worst examples of an affray which could be imagined," Justice Coghlan said. "I emphasise that you all chose to be part of it."
The court heard that Andreevski, of Avondale Heights in Melbourne's northwest, was towards the rear of the group that went across the oval and stopped when the attack began. Garcia, of nearby St Albans, was close to the victim's car during the attack but was unarmed, while the youth, 15 at the time, was one of those who attacked the vehicle.
In April, Nathan Smith, 19, of St Albans, was jailed for 22 years after pleading guilty to charges including murder and affray. He is appealing the severity of the sentence.

So it starts with the typical piece of young male stupidity that happens pretty regularly all over Melbourne. Teenagers throw a few punches in a dispute relating to a girl. That's dumb, but common. And it could have ended there.
It didn't. A subsequent challenge went out, a fight organised. Again, that's not all that uncommon these days. That said, there once was a time when people punched each other's lights out and then that was it.

What I find remarkable about this case is that it appears that most of the machete-wielding thugs did not even know the person they were attacking, or barely at all. The initial beef was between Kyle Nunan and Ante Vucak. Andreevski, Smith, Garcia, Mrjnaus and the others came armed to the teeth with molotov cocktails, poles, knives and machetes, to murder someone they had apparently never met. Just because their friend asked them to. 

Is this what they call "backing up your mates"?
Having your friend's back is an essential part of the male code. Yet at some point it has become warped beyond recognition. You'd think that a true friend would have the sense to dissuade these people he allegedly cares about from committing an act that would land them in prison for a long time. But no. For a certain class of people, friendship is seemingly about willingness to commit murder of a complete stranger, just over some macho bullshit that is entirely someone else's business.

And the incident outside court this week - a brother of one of the sentenced men taunting the grieving family - shows that little has been learned from this horrible mistake. It's a throwback to the most primitive form of tribalism; murder is not instrinsically wrong, it's only wrong when it happens to one of my group. The way of thinking that propagates this cycle of violence lives on.

There's video of the incident outside court here.
The other bewildering aspect of this kind of behaviour is that undoubtedly the convicted men believed that what they were doing was the manly thing to do. Yes, the courageous, masculine course of action was to get a large mob of people armed with deadly weapons to attack a smaller group of people who had believed it was only going to be a fist fight, and who were trying to avoid the fight once they realised what they had got themselves into. Guys in their early 20s taking on guys in their mid-teens.
 
If this is what manliness has turned into, the world has officially turned upside down.

Tofu containers: an essential storage item for every Asian?

If you are of East or South East Asian heritage and live in my part of the world, there is a very strong chance you have one of these in your home. Or possibly twenty or so.

Not necessarily this same brand. But these kind of bean curd containers are ubiquitous in Asian households in Melbourne. Generally they are used to store left over food, but I've seen them used for storing other items as well.
I used to think this was just something my family did; after all, my mother is one of those people who is obsessed with not throwing things away. ("Don't be so wasteful, you can wash this and re-use it" was a frequently-heard phrase in my house growing up)
But then one day, while at a dinner party at a Malaysian-born friend's house, it came time to pack away some of the left overs, and she opened a drrawer to reveal a treasure trove of tofu containers. "Oh, you use these too?" I asked.
"Of course!" she replied. "Doesn't everyone?"

Well, perhaps not; I wonder if this is one thing that separates the Asians from the non-Asians. See, white folks buy tofu as well, albeit in smaller quantities than Asians. But they are likely to buy it in a regular supermarket, in which case it will probably come in vaccuum packaging or something like that, and be quite expensive.

If you are Asian, however, you are more likely to shop in an Asian grocery, which is where you will find fresh bean curd in these sorts of plastic containers. They are also about half the price of the supermarket variety, which is probably a large part of the reason that Asians shop there. Many white folks find Asian groceries a bit intimidating in their foreignness and don't go there.

So aside from the value of the tofu that comes inside these containers, they make for a cheap and easily stored substitute for tupperware, and it seems Asian mothers just can't get enough of them. My own mother must have at least 50 of them (alongside another 50 Chinese take-away containers, the other tupperware substitute).

But I've never lived outside Melbourne, so I want to know; is this a strictly Melbourne thing to do? Does tofu in other cities, and indeed countries, come packaged in this way? And if so, do the Asians there collect them obsessively? Or alternatively, are you a non-Asian who has a big stash of these somewhere?

Attack on Indian man leads to Victoria's first race-hate charges

The state of Victoria has had in place racial vilification laws in place for almost a decade now, but only now will we see them in action. Three men have faced court in Frankston after allegedly physically assaulting and verbally abusing an Indian student.

22-year-old Graphics student Rajan Kumar Katkam was travelling on a bus from Frankston to Rye on February 6th this year when he was subjected to a 45 minute ordeal of punching, kicking and racial taunts by the young men.

He said that no one on the bus did anything about it, except for one old lady who tried to intervene, but was then herself threatened by the men.

Interestingly, the article at the Herald-Sun about this incident has a considerable number of comments that seem to blame the Indian student for the crime of being brown and riding a bus. They display hostility to the concept of a racial vilification law, which also spills over into hostility towards Indians and non-white people in general. Observe a selection:

Mark of Knox Posted at 10:11 AM July 28, 2010
OK,so you name the nationality of the Indians,lets be fair and name the nationality of the accused.Quiet often these offences are done by other ethnic groups as i have witnessed in this city on numerous occasions
Comment 2 of 52

Sid of Geelong Posted at 10:12 AM July 28, 2010
What about all the racial taunts issued by Indians against Australians in our own country. What goes around comes around.
Comment 3 of 52

JIMMY PO of South Melbourne Posted at 10:28 AM July 28, 2010
WHAT A JOKE AND WASTE OF TIME!
Comment 8 of 52

brian wood of sunbury Posted at 10:47 AM July 28, 2010
ITS ABUSIVE LANGUAGE NOT RACE, TO VILIFY AUSTRALIANS OR OTHERS OVER COMMENTS TO INDIANS WILL CREATE BIGGER RACE DIVIDES. NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR RACE OR INDIANS ARE REQUIRED, OLD LAWS COVER THIS ADEQUATLY. THIS ARTICLE EVEN NOW INCITES ME TO DISLIKE INDIANS, AND SIMMILAR WAS LIKELY THE CAUSE OF WHY THEY ABUSED HIM. TREAT PEOPLE AS PEOPLE NOT RACE.
Comment 12 of 52

Nathan of Melb Posted at 12:06 PM July 28, 2010
Why are we bending over backwards and creating new laws for immigrants . You can't even read shop signs in some areas now as they are all in other languages. Australia takes more care of immigrants and listens more to them than people who have lived here all their lives. White Australians will soon be the most disadvantaged in our society.
Comment 25 of 52

NJS of Melb Posted at 12:11 PM July 28, 2010
I bet if the victim was white this wouldn't be going to court.
Comment 26 of 52

James Stuart of Melbourne Posted at 12:52 PM July 28, 2010
Why is expressing an opinion that you want your country to remain white a crime? Sure they allegedly assaulted him, and should be brought to account, however, the scary thing is they are ALSO being dragged into court for expressing a political, racial and deeply held opinion. Now THATS the scary thing.. Victoria..Welcome to the Gulag state. Where voicing a dissenting opinion is now a CRIMINAL offence!! Imaging YOU being arrested for being a Liberal voter when a Labour government was in power. Or vice versa. Holding an opinion NO MATTER HOW REPREHENSIBLE is NOT and must NEVER be a crime!!! Lets hope the courts throw those charges out as being unconstitutional and a breach of International Human rights laws. On the assault charges, lets hope they receive a fair and impartial trial and are NOT held to account simply because of their political beliefs!!!
Comment 33 of 52

And so on. "Mark of Knox" wants to know the ethnicity of the attackers and seems to think white Aussies couldn't have done this; although given the location of the attack, its unlikely to be anyone else other than a white Aussie. (Edit: it has been later revealed the three attackers are all in their mid-20s and named Jason Ritchie, Adam Baxter and David Potter.) "Brian Wood of Sunbury" seems to think the real victims of vilification are the upstanding young men who attacked Rajan Kumar Katkam and are now having their good names sullied by the accusation of racism. It's such an outrage that it makes him dislike Indians, as well as making him write all in capitals. Go figure. Meanwhile "James Stuart of Melbourne" seems to think these three violent offenders are political prisoners, heroes for the right to free speech. Hmmm...
 
Now, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for questioning the need for a racial vilification law; for example, you could argue that any harmful act would probably be covered under our penal code, and thus not require another charge on top of that. But the anger of those commenters is sorely misplaced in this case. They should direct it toward the actual villains, a trio of thugs who drunkenly assault people for looking foreign. Given the constant crowing by Herald-Sun readers for tougher sentencing, they should remember that a charge of racial hate may mean the offenders actually do some meaningful time behind bars.

Melbourne thugs face court for Indian-bashing

Two groups of young men have been in court these last few weeks over unrelated incidents of assault on Indian students last year in the Western suburbs Melbourne.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Three young men drove around searching for an Indian to rob before setting on a student in a phone booth and bashing him unconscious, a court has heard.

The Victorian County Court heard Aleksander Trifunovic drove his friends Shayne Comensoli and Lennon Metaxas around Melbourne's west, looking for an Indian person to rob on the night of October 15, 2009.
Comensoli and Metaxas, who had been drinking at a local hotel, spotted Indian student Lucky Singh, 23, in a phone booth in Sunshine.
The 20-year-olds got out of the car and attacked him about 1.30am.
Prosecutor Amelia Macknay said the pair believed a person of Indian ethnicity was most likely to have cash on them.
During the assault, Metaxas punched Mr Singh in the face so hard he fell to the ground.
Comensoli held him while Metaxas punched him repeatedly as Mr Singh screamed in pain and fear.
Comensoli repeatedly said, "Shut up, you Indian mother******," and then said, "Now it's my turn".
He swapped places with Metaxas and delivered more blows.
Mr Singh was hit up to 20 times to his head and face and curled up on the ground covering his head with his arms.
But the pair picked him up, dumped him on a park bench and continued the attack.
Mr Singh was left bleeding and unconscious on the footpath, suffering bone fractures, severe swelling and bruising.
The pair stole $80 in cash from his wallet and split it between them, then called for Trifunovic, 20, to collect them.
Mr Singh, who had been living in Victoria for eight months, said in his victim statement the attack had shattered his confidence and he suffered flashbacks. "I'm too scared to walk at night," he said. "My life has completely changed. I feel scared to go outside."
Mr Singh said he had thought Australians were welcoming and friendly but had changed his mind.
Police arrested the trio soon after the assault.
Trifunovic told police the pair had offered him $10 for his role but he refused the money. He said the trio had driven around Sunshine looking for an Indian for "10 minutes, tops".
Comensoli pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury and robbery, while Trifunovic pleaded guilty to aiding a robbery.
Defence barrister Ron Tait denied there was a racial aspect to Trifunovic's crimes.
He said the crime was shocking but his client was still young with a clean record, and asked that he be spared jail.
The crown called for jail terms for Comensoli and Trifunovic. County Court Judge Meryl Sexton said she would need to consider what part racism played in the attack. Comensoli's pre-sentencing hearing was adjourned pending a psychology and youth justice report. Metaxas was sentenced in March to three years in a youth justice centre, after pleading guilty to intentionally causing serious injury and robbery.

From this story we can see a pattern that is becoming all too common. If they wanted money, they could have threatened Singh and he would have given it to them. But instead, clearly the motivation was the rush of inflicting their violence and dominance on another individual. And while not all the assaults on Indians in Melbourne have been racist in nature, only a fool (or a defence barrister) would deny the spectre of racism here. Racism, to my mind, not only motivated their choice to target Lucky Singh, but influenced their decision to severely beat him rather than just rob and scare him.

Also from Melbourne, this time the Herald-Sun:

A GANG of youths whose bashing of an Indian man blinded him in one eye have all avoided jail.

Majang Ngor, 20, the last of the gang to face court, was yesterday given an eight-month suspended jail term for the unprovoked attack on Kanan Kharbanda (pictured below). Prosecutors had wanted him jailed for four years.
But Judge Susan Cohen said this would be unjust, given the penalties imposed on gang members who were more culpable. Ngor hadn't been an instigator or a ringleader.
At least three other youths - who can't be named because of their age - were given nine-month youth supervision orders in the Children's Court. The Director of Public Prosecutions is appealing against those sentences. Ngor pleaded guilty in the County Court to recklessly causing serious injury, intentionally causing injury, robbery, and attempted robbery over the March 2008 bashing. Mr Kharbanda, an accounting student, had been walking a friend to Sunshine station. One of Ngor's group demanded a dollar before hitting Mr Kharbanda in the face. Others joined in, kicking and punching; his friend was also hit and kicked to the ground. Mr Kharbanda suffered a fractured eye socket and broken nose. He has lost the sight in his right eye.
Crime Victims Support Association president Noel McNamara said it was beyond belief that the youths had been let off "scot free". "It's disgraceful. The Indian community has the right - all citizens have the right - to be up in arms about it," he said.
Ngor told police they'd been drinking at a party and one of the group had suggested they go "hustling".
He admitted joining the pack, but denied striking either victim.
Judge Cohen said the Sudanese refugee had since worked hard to reform himself. To his credit he'd finished year 12, got a stable job, and had stopped binge-drinking. She said he hadn't caused the worst injuries, but had helped those who did. Violence at railway stations was of major public concern, but the matter was "less serious" than if weapons had been used. The judge suspended the jail term for 15 months and ordered Ngor to do 40 hours of community work, saying the greatest public benefit would come from his rehabilitation.
Shadow attorney-general Robert Clark said it was extraordinary that none would spend time behind bars and said it is weak sentencing laws that allowed the gang members to walk free.
"The victim of this crime will suffer a lifetime sentence with his injuries while the offenders are being let off with just a few hours of community service," he said.
"Imposing suspended sentences does nothing to build respect for the law, yet under John Brumby's weak sentencing laws vicious crimes like this bashing will continue to qualify for suspended sentences. In contrast, a Baillieu Government will abolish suspended sentences for all crimes so that jail will mean jail," he said.

Obviously there has been an angry reaction to this soft sentence; however it is important to remember that Ngor apparently did not take part in the actual beating, but was merely part of the group that did so. In any case, the real injustice seems to be that the other youths involved, who presumably did actively attack Kharbanda, could not be given any meaningful punishment because of their young age. Considering that Melbourne is currently experiencing an upsurge of violence by teenagers, the toothlessness of the legal system when sentencing them is no doubt a contributing factor.

Want another example? Try this one from Adelaide:

A group of international students, mostly Indians, in the Australian city of Adelaide are living in constant fear after a gang fire-bombed three of their cars Tuesday, the latest incident in a series of continuing attacks that have damaged 12 cars in three months.

The students, who live in a block of 13 South Australian Student Housing Association units in Greenacres, say the early morning fire-bomb attack has left the residents very worried. Adelaide Now quoted Yasif Multani, 28, as saying that a group of up to 15 local teenagers were believed to be responsible for the string of attacks. Two vehicles owned by Multani were torched in the early hours of Tuesday.
He said the attacks had led to more than 12 cars being damaged in the past three months, mail being stolen from letter boxes, racist graffiti being painted and garbage bins being emptied on the streets. Car windscreens have also been smashed in the complex and one night a couch on a veranda was set ablaze. Multani said a friend of his saw a teenager on a bicycle throw a petrol bomb through the windscreen of a car early Tuesday.
"These people know when we are here and when we are working. They watch us. They know everything we do. They know which cars are ours and they have not damaged the cars of non-international students parked in this area. People are scared. At night time (the offenders) are banging on the doors and running away," Multani said.

Predictably, the police are claiming there is no evidence of racism, and the Indian media are describing it as a racial attack. Whether it is racial or not, one can't help but get the feeling that the police would downplay racism every time, and the Indian media would see racism every time. In this instance I suspect the Indian media might have it right though.


UPDATE:
Just came across this at The Australian, dated July 15:

BRISBANE's Indian community fears it could fall prey to the same outbreaks of racial violence that have gripped Sydney and Melbourne.

There have been two attacks on their students at the same suburban railway station in two months.
In the most recent assault, 23-year-old Sukdeb was stabbed in the neck and chest, and beaten with a tree branch by two young white men, who are still at large. One of the knife wounds penetrated his chest, missing his heart by just 5cm. "They attacked us straight away . . . I tried to speak to him, but he stabbed me," Sukdeb told the Nine Network yesterday. "They were totally drunk. They don't know what they were doing." Sukdeb has been recovering at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and could be released today.
Coopers Plains station, which is just 1km from Griffith University's Nathan campus, was also the scene of an attack last month, in which an Indian student was attacked and robbed.
Griffith University Indian Students Association president Parth Raval said the student was attacked from behind, his attackers banging his head against a pillar.

See also: Addressing the myths and misconceptions about violence against Indians in Australia

2 teenagers arrested for stabbing of Nitin Garg

The stabbing of Indian student Nitin Garg (pictured) in the west of Melbourne in January this year came amid a climate of fear for Indians in Australia. Numerous assaults against Indian students had garnered media attention, but Garg's was the first that ended in death.

Now 2 boys aged 15 and 16 have been arrested in connection with the stabbing of Garg, which occurred as he walked to work through a Yarraville park at night.

The police have stated they do not believe the attack was racially motivated. How they know this I'm not sure; there was apparently no evidence of a mugging either. So what was the motive, if not robbery or racism? It is an unfortunate reality that there are young males out there who do not need any motive to attack someone, other than the thrill of brandishing power over another.

At least one of the two boys has been described as Caucasian. Why is that relevant? Only because there is the endlessly repeated myth that "ethnic gangs" are responsible for all these attacks.

The teenager who cannot be named was produced before a Children's Court after his arrest in a Melbourne suburb. His parents were also present in the court and the mother was seen weeping as the teenager was remanded to custody after a brief appearance. (source)

One wonders where the parents were when their son was hanging out in parks at night stabbing people.

Beating and kicking him mercilessly was totally out of character

  In local news this week...

NO JAIL FOR BASHER OF DEAKIN UNIVERSITY SECURITY GUARD

A 23-YEAR-OLD man who “mercilessly beat” a Deakin University security guard has escaped jail time. Joel Murcia pleaded guilty in the Ringwood Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, June 3, to recklessly causing serious injury. The court heard Murcia punched his defenceless victim, Sandi Singh, 17 times, kicked him five times and kneed him once.
Ringwood Magistrate Max Cashmore sentenced Murcia to a four-month intensive corrections order, which will require him to undergo community work, report to authorities twice a week and undergo counselling.
Mr Cashmore said “it was but for the grace of God the victim was not killed” in the frenzied 53-second attack.
The court heard that on September 24 Murcia, co-accused Richard Keane and another man were vandalising a Deakin University sign at 2am after drinking heavily at its bar. Mr Singh and another guard spotted the trio and then an argument and fight broke out. Mr Cashmore said Mr Singh, who was in court, and his colleague were simply doing their jobs and were beaten mercilessly for it. “I’m sorry to you, Mr Singh, and the community is sorry that someone doing his job has to put up with this type of conduct,” he said.
Defence barrister Wayne Henwood told the court his client had finished an arts degree and was attempting to secure work in the film industry. Mr Henwood said a conviction would severely damage his chances of landing a job. “This 53 seconds of madness was totally out of character for my client and he will not re-offend,” Mr Henwood said. But Mr Cashmore said a conviction must be recorded and Murcia only escaped jail because of his age and good references.
In February, co-accused Keane pleaded guilty to recklessly causing injury and received a nine-month community service order without a conviction.

That attack was reported here originally.
I originally came across this story due to my following the issue of anti-Indian violence in Australia. Now the fact that the bashed man was Indian may not be a relevant detail, so I won't focus on it. (Which doesn't mean definitely it wasn't a factor, mind you.) However while racism was clearly one factor in the apparent phenomenon of "curry-bashing", the kind of recklessly aggressive mentality exemplified by Keane and Murcia tells you more about why such things occur, in my opinion.
The attack was caught on CCTV and you can witness it below:



Remember though that Joel Murcia is not some stereotypical street thug from an underprivileged background. He's someone who appears to have gone to a good school and completed an Arts degree.
“This 53 seconds of madness was totally out of character for my client and he will not re-offend,” said Murcia's barrister. I'm in no position to say whether that is true or not, but it makes me wonder; what does actually determines one's character?  What about him and his mates vandalising the University sign? Was that "out of character" as well? Plenty of people get drunk every week yet manage to avoid committing crimes while in that state.

Is he of good character because he manages to avoid committing random violence most of the time? Or do we truly judge a man's character on how he acts when placed in a challenging situation? Most people, if caught drunkenly committing a petty crime (and let's be honest, there are plenty of us guys who have done something like that), would either cop it sweet or try to run away. What does it say about the character of a group of people who choose instead to fight security, using the advantage of 3 on 2, and not only that but to mercilessly beat them, kicking and kneeing the men when they are on the ground?

As for the other defendant named in the case, Richard "Ox" Keane, you can check out this Facebook group, seemingly set up by his friends, and judge for yourself what kind of character he might be.



Kicked to death by "persons of good character"

The truth about violence against Indians in Australia

Elderly Indian businessman stabbed to death in Melbourne

A week ago, the body of 61 year-old Kewal Dhillon (pictured right) was found underneath a freeway footbridge, dead from stab wounds to the upper body and possibly from falling off the bridge as well. Dhillon, a successful real estate agent, had gotten up early Saturday morning for a walk and not returned. There are no suspects at the moment and police are appealing for help from the public; it's not clear whether it was related to a mugging, a targeted attack by someone he knew or an act of random violence. The suburb where it took place, Balwyn, is upper middle-class and recently was reported as having among the best state schools in Victoria; it is no one's idea of a rough neighbourhood.

The furore about violence in Australia against persons of Indian origin seems to have settled down since last year. But has the violence itself settled down? It's hard to say. This latest fatal incident may well have nothing to with that phenomenon; we'll see as things unfold.

How to use the media to incite racial hatred

(Hat tip to regular reader Peter)

There are plenty of ranting voices out there in the wilds of the internet who will spew crazed theories and racial epithets, but that's not the subject of today's post.

This is about someone blogging under the banner of a major news organisation, who claims to dislike racism, yet seems quite happy to stir it up incessantly.

This is about how journalists can pursue a racist agenda even in an article that purports to be about something entirely unrelated.

The journalist I refer to is Andrew Bolt, arguably Australia's best-known conservative commentator and who claims to have the most popular political blog in the country (at the Herald-Sun website).

I've written a few things here in the past about Bolt's approach to racial issues. It would be no surprise to anyone familiar with the man's work that he is very fond of Northern European cultures and scathing towards non-white immigration, particularly regarding Africans and Muslims. One of the issues he (and the Herald-Sun in general) repeatedly focuses on is ethnic crime. To this end, crime committed by Anglo or other white people is merely crime; if the perpetrator happens to be non-white, then it's "ethnic crime" and their ethnicity is highlighted as being significant. Given that the Herald-Sun's readership tends to lean to the Right, and is generally worried about the erosion of values and standards in our country (as every generation is), their exists a prevailing idea that the alleged decline of our society must be because of all those immigrants.

Thus you see posts where Bolt infers that Obama is planning a race war against white people, insinuates that a violent thug could not have been white despite a police report saying so, or that the people responsible for attacking Indian students in Melbourne were all non-white.

So what about a story that might seem to contradict this dominant narrative?

Take the recent rioting in Oakleigh that resulted in a Bob Jane T-Mart store being trashed. Look at any footage of the incident and you'll observe a sea of faces that were overwhelmingly Caucasian (whether Anglo, European, or Middle Eastern). I wrote on this blog that had it been Asian or black faces, then focus would be on immigration and ethnic crime; so since the faces were white, I wondered, would race get a mention at all?

Well, yes and no. Bolt shows some photos of the white rioters in a March 21 post called Spot the Feral. And then, to reinforce a point about disrespect for police, shows 3 Youtube clips of young people creating a ruckus and having run-ins with police officers. It's a little unclear what entirely is going on in these videos, but the aggressive young people in at least 2 of them are African (probably Sudanese).

So a post about aggression, specifically caused by people who happen to be mostly white, is now highlighting the aggression caused by young African men. Of course, you might argue that that is merely coincidental, and maybe it is.

But Bolt is so fond of this footage of aggressive Africans that he shows it again on April 24. This time in a post entitled Teenagers attack police, yet again. The post refers to an out-of-control party in the Victorian country town of Sale, at which police called to the scene were assaulted. Now the ethnicity of the offending teenagers is not mentioned, but anyone who has been to Sale can tell you that Sudanese people are hardly a common sight in Sale - the populace is mostly white with a small Aboriginal population. Yet the footage of Sudanese is dragged out to illustrate it.

Two posts about aggressors who are most likely white or predominantly white. Yet that is a distraction from one of the dominant themes of the Andrew Bolt Blog, so for the sake of a clear narrative, visuals of violent black folks are provided to the reader. We wouldn't want anyone to get confused and think that anyone other than dirty foreigners commit violent acts now, would we?

Fast forward to April 29, and Bolt posts about his upcoming radio show and how he will be discussing what he sees as the problem with female police officers. This seems to be as good an opportunity as any to... show the same footage again? Yes, the Youtube clips of aggressive Sudanese youths, which he has shown twice already in recent weeks, get yet another airing. Of course, the blog post in question doesn't have anything to do with Sudanese, but neither did the other two.

Now of course you can argue, as I'm sure Andrew Bolt would, that there is no significance in the fact that the video footage, which seems to perfectly illustrate his points on a number of issues, features African immigrants. It could have been people of any race.

But of course, if you are familiar with the amount of column inches Bolt has devoted to attacking African immigration, and if you are familiar with the Herald-Sun's sneaky ways of whipping up xenophobic controversy, then you would suspect that Bolt has an agenda here. It's as if, no matter what the issue, Bolt finds a way to remind us that Africans are indeed the enemy.

The cleverness about this is that he has conveyed that idea in three blog posts that are not about Africans and do not even mention Africans.

So do his readers take the bait and embrace the subconscious programming? Commenter Brian sure does (at the third post):

At the risk of being called racist I noticed the prevalence of African and Middle Eastern people involved in those video clips.  So it would seem we have imported troublemakers by the bucket load with out open immigration scheme . As if we haven’t got enough home grown trouble makers already
brian of melbourne (Reply)
Thu 29 Apr 10 (06:02pm)

Well done Brian, you successfully joined the dots that Andrew laid out for you.

Repeat something often enough, and eventually people will believe it to be true.


More like this:

Why you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV

"Send them all back"... even if they are Australian?

What's with all the resentful white people reading the Herald-Sun?

"The subject was described as having dark skin..."

Asian-fearing Herald-Sun readers of the week

Let's all blame the victim