Sydney, July 21 (Inditop.com) India’s Consul General Amit Dasgupta feels it’s not proper to call Indian students in Australia “soft targets,” a term used by the police to describe recent attacks against them over the last two months.
“I have problem with term soft targets because I think it is a term which one can use to almost say that the way you behave becomes a justification for attracting attacks. Today, the international student community is a soft target, tomorrow it will be elderly people and day after it will be physically or visually challenged… so I have a real problem with that term,” said Gupta in a television programme here.
He was making the comments while participating in the latest show of Insight on the television channel SBS. The show was titled “At Risk”.
Gupta also commented on the student demonstration at Harris Park and said it was not just against the recent attacks but also many other issues.
“The core issue on the Harris Park demonstrations needs to be explored a bit… the students were not just demonstrating against attacks, they were demonstrating about a clusters of issues … which included their entire living over here…. I think it’s a whole series of thing put together which actually gave vent to thier considerable angst and frustration… and I think that needs to be looked in to,” said Dasgupta.
On June 8 about 200 Indian students demonstrated at Harris Park against police apathy after two Indian men were attacked by ethnic Lebanese in the western suburb of Sydney. During the protest lasting until the early hours of June 9, three ethnic Lebanese were assaulted, sparking fears of inter-communal tensions in a city home to over 200 different nationalities
There are over 500,000 international students in Australia pursuing university education and vocational studies of which 94,000 are Indians – the second highest after the Chinese. Thousands of Indians are enrolled in vocational courses in government and private Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes that act more as visa factories than institutions of learning.
In recent years Australia’s education industry has boomed to become the country’s third-largest foreign currency earner after coal and iron ore, generating about $12 billion in revenue in 2008. Indian students in Australia alone contribute $3.5 billion a year to the economy.
