Attacks on Indians in Australia could hit bilateral relations, India warns Australia

New Delhi: India has warned Australia that there is a chance of relations between the two countries getting strained unless Australia took strong measures immediately to stop the continuing attacks on Indian students studying in that country.

India’s concern over the issue was conveyed by S M Krishna, India’s Minister for External Affairs, during a phone call he has had with Stephen Smith, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

A statement from the Government of India said that S M Krishna, in his telephone talk with Stephen Smith, recalled that the Australian government had repeatedly reassured India that the Australian authorities were treating the incidents of assaults on Indian students with “utmost seriousness.” However, the untoward incidents are continuing, Krishna said.

S M Krishna, the statement added, told Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs that “non-redress of this vital issue will cast a shadow” on the “otherwise excellent” relations between India and Australia.

Stephen Smith, according to the statement from the Government of India, conveyed to S M Krishna his “condolences” on the deaths of the Indians in Australia in the recent attacks and said that Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard had decried the attacks.

Smith told Krishna that the government of Australia is aware of the need for an “early breakthrough” in the investigations being held now and that the government gives the “highest priority” to the well-being of students from India.

Krishna asked the government of Australia to take steps immediately to ensure that the police authorities of the states concerned conduct the current investigations with “sensitivity” and “a sense of urgency.”

The Government of Indian issued a travel advisory for college students from India studying in Australia, after the Indian student, Nitin Garg, 21, was stabbed to death in Melbourne as he was walking from a railway station through a public park on January 2, 2010.

In 2009, there have been many incidents where Indian students were attacked in Australia.

Over a one-month period in the summer of 2009, at least 10 students from India were attacked. In the worst of these incidents, one Indian student was left in a coma; in another, an Indian a student was stabbed in the stomach.

The Australian police reportedly arrested over a dozen people in connection with these attacks.

Authorities in Australia have repeatedly taken the stand that the attacks and robberies were “not racially motivated” but were “crimes of opportunity against soft targets” – meaning, students travelling alone, at night, on public transportation.

However, most Indian students describe the repeated attacks as racially motivated.

A week ago, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard had rejected an allegation that Australia is “unsafe for international students,” saying that Australia is a “very safe” country and that, by world standards, Australia has a very low rate of homicide.

It is estimated that over 90,000 Indian students study in Australia.

Vayalar Ravi, India’s Minister for Overseas Affairs, has urged the government of Australia to take all measures it can to check the repeated attacks on Indians.

Ravi added that the Australian government’s response to the series of attacks on Indian students, including instances where the victims have died, is “disturbing.”

Meanwhile, a top police officer in Australia has told reporters that Indians are “far safer in Australia than in their own country.” This remark from Simon Overland, the Police Chief Commissioner of Victoria, came on January 11, 2009, even as the body of 21-year-old Nitin Garg, who was stabbed in Australia, was cremated in Ludhiana.