Student danger zones

Greg Sheridan
11 June 2009
Source: www.theaustralian.news.com.au

ABHISHEK Sanadhya is the very picture of the Indian geek, a term meant in no sense to be derogatory. Slim, with aquiline features, nerdy specs and full, wavy hair, the 25-year-old is a postgraduate student at Swinburne University.

He has been viciously assaulted three times in Melbourne. Yet, despite fruitless efforts to report at least one of these assaults to police, none will figure in Victorian crime statistics, which is one reason Indian students are sceptical about repeated police assurances that Melbourne is one of the safest places in the world.

Sanadhya, a quiet and friendly fellow, comes from Rajasthan, where he completed his bachelors degree in information technology. He first came to Australia in September 2007 and enrolled in Swinburne TAFE to improve his English.

Now he is doing a masters and pays $7000 to $8000 a semester in tuition fees. Unlike some other Indian students, he has no complaints about the quality of education he receives in Australia. "I started looking at Australia originally because the quality of education is very good and it's cheaper than other locations," he says.

Sanadhya's first bad experience came only a few days after his arrival. "It was the first time I went to Flinders Street station. I went into the city in search of a DJ's job. I was going home about 10.30 at night.

"At that time I didn't yet know how to open a bank account in Australia and had $400 in my pocket.

"I didn't know where to sit in the train and I couldn't believe it was so deserted. So I sat at the end of the carriage. There were only two other boys in the carriage. One came up to me and pulled a knife on me and took all the dollars out of my purse."

The second time was outside the house he later shared at Clayton, a middle-class suburb that houses Monash University.

"I was speaking to my friend on my mobile about 9.30 at night. I turned it off and suddenly I was punched in the face. There were five people but only one was punching me. He used a knife and he punched my face about 30 times.

"I had $200 on me because I wanted to go to Shepparton to find work. He broke my nose. I had a lot of trouble breathing. I had to have an operation on it back in India."

The follow-up to the incident is revealing. Sanadhya did not report the first assault. He tried to report the second assault to Clayton police station but it was shut. He needed medical attention so some other friends went to nearby Oakleigh police station to report the attack.

They were told that Sanadhya should come in himself, but that he would face a minimum wait of two hours to see a police officer, and in any event they didn't have enough officers to investigate individual assaults. Naturally enough, Sanadhya didn't report the incident.

The third time he was assaulted was while travelling to see a friend. A drug addict demanded money. By this time Sanadhya knew never to carry money in Melbourne, and he refused to give up his mobile phone either. The addict stabbed him in the hand with a syringe.

Sanadhya is the opposite of a whinger. It's only at the end of our conversation that he tells me of these incidents, and he is inclined not to make too much of them. He still is positive about his experience in Australia.

But such events inevitably have their consequences. "My university work has suffered. I used to be very good at IT work. I needed more time for an assignment, and I told my lecturer what happened and he said you must bring a police statement to back up your claims. But the police would not give me a statement." He hadn't reported the incidents, you see. Somebody told him to get in touch with the victims of crime unit, but they did not get back to him.

Sanadhya's case does not solve the debate about how many of the attacks on Indian students, in Melbourne and in Sydney, are racially motivated, either in whole or in part. But he does demonstrate the vulnerability of students.

"When I came here I had nowhere to live and I didn't know anyone. I slept three nights in the library," he says. It was a chance meeting with an old friend from Gujarat that led to Sanadhya's first semi-permanent place to live. He stayed with that friend for a month.

"The Australian government should do something about student accommodation. I don't think universities should be allowed to offer a place to a foreign student unless accommodation is arranged in advance. The visa shouldn't be issued unless the accommodation has been arranged," he says.

One Indian student points out that Australians might feel the students are being a bit precious here, but asks how would Australians feel if they were plonked in the middle of New Delhi with little or no money, daunting study requirements and no accommodation and, without much command of Hindi, had to get a job and organise affordable, long-term accommodation for themselves in the Indian rental market.

The attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney and the international response to them have become a huge issue in Australia's biggest two cities. But they have also become a foreign policy crisis for Australia. Every day the attacks and the reaction are front-page news throughout India. Indian television routinely runs a catchline about Australia, "Racism beyond shame". But the story has been reported all across the world. It has been on the BBC and British Sky TV every day this week and has featured in leading newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and on all the main international wire news services.

Yesterday the Victorian government announced a high visibility police campaign. Chief Police Commissioner Simon Overland said operations would target trouble spots around Sunshine, St Albans, Thomastown, Clayton and Dandenong.

These initiatives will involve uniformed police, transit police, the dog squad, mounted police and the air wing. However, these initiatives looked somewhat less than well-thought-through and wholly integrated when the ABC Melbourne's morning radio presenter Jon Faine revealed that the Melbourne train service operator Connex had heard nothing about them until they were announced publicly.

Gautam Gupta, founder of the Federation of Indian Students in Australia, tells The Australian that students' trust in police is very low. "What will work is if these new measures are permanent. But are they going to be permanent? For how long will the air wing be involved? The government keeps making statements that are contradicted by their next statements.

"First they said Indians are soft targets. Then they said Indians shouldn't draw attention to themselves by speaking in their mother tongues. Then they said Indians should travel in groups and practise self-defence. Now they say they shouldn't travel in groups or practise self-defence."

Gupta is here referring to incidents in Sydney and Melbourne where police have moved on groups of Indians who gather at the most vulnerable train stations to escort other Indians safely home.

TV footage of police moving Indian students on, or roughly breaking up student demonstrations, is the only footage of Australian police action hundreds of millions of Indians have seen, although the YouTube footage of one of the bashings and other footage of Indian bashing victims in hospital has also been seen by millions.

For all that, Sanadhya's experience does not solve the riddle of how much racism is involved in these attacks. After speaking to a substantial number of students, and to a wide range of other Indian community leaders and Indians both resident and visiting, the consensus view that emerges is that they like Australia and mostly get on well with Australians, but everyone The Australian spoke to believes there is a significant amount of racism involved in the attacks.

Rahul Kohli, 28, is an assertive and self-confident Australian permanent resident of Indian background. Now a financial services consultant, he wears the obligatory pinstripe suit and his body language is not that of a natural victim.

He came to Australia in 2004 to study towards a masters in IT and commerce at RMIT. Yet, although not the victim of assault, he has been subjected to racist abuse. He was travelling in a train once, speaking, in his view, quietly on his mobile phone in Hindi, with his hand covering the mouthpiece to keep the noise down.

"An Australian guy in front of me started telling me to f..k off. I said, 'Mate, am I too loud?' He kept swearing at me, calling me a stinking bastard. He said I probably felt safe because I was in Australia now. I determined I wasn't going to back down and I said, 'OK, forget it's Australia, what do you want to do about it?' Then he backed down and accused me of being aggressive."

On another occasion Kohli was unwell and went to a clinic. He had paid extra money to get eligibility for Medicare insurance and asked the medical centre how much it would charge above the bulk billing fee.

The centre asked him where he came from and, when told, replied: "Of course, you're Indian, that's why you can't pay."

Kohli also believes there is discrimination in the jobs market. Despite his double masters and the high marks he scored, he got few job interviews.

When he asked his university for help in finding housing, he was referred to a website: that was the sum of all the help he wasoffered.

Like every Indian student The Australian spoke to, Kohli mentions the fact that Australia is a bit cheaper as a reason for coming here; but at more than $8000 a semester, it's not that cheap. And he doesn't think the level of education at RMIT was all that good. "I'd say it wasn't up to the mark. It was a very generalised level of education with only a mediocre level of detail."

This view is shared by FISA president Amit Menghani, 22. He is an aerospace student at RMIT. He cites one course he is doing where the university has cut contact hours from six hours a week to five, for a course that was designed to have eight contact hours a week. The situation with tutorials is so dire that people have had to volunteer to offer tutorials for free, as a kind of charitable welfare measure. "Other people enrol in courses and find them suddenly cancelled after a few weeks," he says.

Menghani is a likable and self-confident guy, solidly built. "Yes, racism has been part of my experience," he says. "I like it in Australia. I like talking to people. People out here generally are very good. But in certain scenarios you do encounter racism."

On one occasion he was working as a security guard at a club and his boss told him not to let one fellow in. Later that guy came back with a group and assaulted Menghani.

Kohli sums up how a lot of Indian students feel. "I would like to say to Kevin Rudd, 'You condemn these attacks, but what does that mean if you don't provide extra resources for the police?"'

Gupta confirms that the worst experiences for foreigners are at the small vocational colleges, which offer no assistance and often cater only to foreign students.

"Indian students come here and want to mix and be part of the whole society. They don't get that opportunity in the vocational colleges," he says.

Greg Sheridan is The Australian's foreign editor.