Indians protest in Sydney after new attack

AUSTALIA: Hundreds of Indian students protested and launched violent reprisals overnight in Australia’s biggest city, in the latest flare-up in racial tensions in recent weeks, police said Tuesday. Police said they had to call in the dog squad to control the crowd in west Sydney, where protesters wielding sticks and baseball bats attacked men of “Middle Eastern appearance” in apparent retaliation for an earlier assault.

It was believed to be the first time Indian students had reacted violently to a series of attacks on them in Australia which have caused outrage on the subcontinent and strained diplomatic ties between Canberra and New Delhi. The student protesters gathered after an Indian man in his early 20s was attacked by a group of men of Middle Eastern descent, according to police.

They then attacked a carload of men who drove past and pelted them with eggs, leaving them with cuts and bruises, said Pawan Luthra, the Sydney-based publisher of a newspaper called Indian Link. Police superintendent Robert Redfern denied reports members of the crowd, which finally dispersed at about 2:00 am, were armed with knives.

But he said: “There were certainly suggestions people had either baseball bats or hockey sticks and the like.”

Sydney, Tuesday, AFP