Violence against Indian students is big news in Australia because many of them have been attacked by hoodlums lately. Since not enough was done originally to protect the victims, there has been understandable outrage among the Indian community here and in India.

The Australian community is also outraged about these attacks and so some people have suggested that we need more legislation against such attacks. I question the need for more legislation.

First of all, it is already illegal to assault anyone physically and even verbally. It is also illegal to incite racial hatred. So the law is already in position to arrest and charge these hoodlums who are attacking Indians. But this legislation is only effective if the hoodlums can be caught and charged. So what is needed is vigilance and police protection.

Does anyone really believe that the hoodlums are going to be stopped when a new law comes out telling them that it’s wrong to attack anyone on racist grounds? These attackers are thugs and scum as I have written in a previous post and they just want to rob and bash.

The police has to stop them because they are criminals. The attackers did call their victims names but I suspect they call everyone names. That’s the way they are.

I wouldn’t even refer to morals and ethics in this context since the perpetrators are the lowest of the low and have no understanding of how wrong it is to do what they are doing, nor do they care.

So they must be stopped. Forget any new legislation. Just catch them, charge them with assault and use the law to place them where they will no longer be able to attack anyone else.

When we invite foreign students to study in our country we must provide a safe environment for them. If we don’t then we should suffer the same consequences that New Zealand suffered when it failed to protect Chinese students from attacks by locals. The Chinese government made sure that it announced on a website that it was not safe to study in New Zealand. The effect of these warnings was that New Zealand educational institutions suffered financially…as they deserved to.

It bothers me when financial gain is the incentive for protecting foreign students. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would like to think that we in Australia are doing what is morally correct when we take measures to protect everyone who is in our country. It should not be about money (although I know that money talks loudly). It’s about caring enough to do the honourable thing.